Honoring DEI Requires a New Ethic and a New Science

Systemic change requires complex conceptual and practical efforts from organizations and individuals alike. In forensic psychiatry, improving the experiences of marginalized groups respects the personhood and dignity of those who have been neglected over time and promises improvements in outcomes that have been affected by the unevenness of history. Specific plans for education, monitoring, and improvement consequently call for related frameworks in professional ethics and research to lead and accompany them. The professional ethics of forensic practice, for example, can now consider years of writing that advance traditional precepts toward dignity, social purpose, truth, and human rights. Research design can improve the representativeness of samples, the methods that assess inequity, and the survey construction that populates both quality improvement and academic research. Responding to the growing understanding of forensic inequity will require both a new ethic and a new science.