Another Call to Action for Integrating Culture into Forensic Therapeutics

Forensic mental health services provide care for many people of minority ethnicity whose over-representation in these areas is a result of complex structural inequities in society. The need for cross-cultural understanding has long been advocated in forensic practice. Guidance on the integration of culture into forensic assessment has been well described, but little has been written about cultural responsiveness in forensic rehabilitation and recovery-based services. Cultural responsiveness is commonly expressed as a strategic goal for forensic providers, but there is little reported evidence of how to address and measure the effectiveness of cultural responsiveness initiatives. Equity of outcome by ethnicity should be the aim of forensic services, and this requires systematic measurement. Cultural safety, rather than cultural competence, has been promoted as the patient experience services should strive for. A measurement-based care framework can provide tools to evaluate service responses systematically and iteratively to address the challenges in achieving delivery of culturally safe forensic services.