Tamara L. F.
De Beuf, PhD
Affiliations
I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement in Amsterdam. I am part of a large-scale and longitudinal research program that evaluates the implementation and effectiveness of alternative sentencing. Additionally, I am a research fellow at the Leuven Institute of Criminology and Criminological and Experimental Legal Psychology Lab (CELL) at KU Leuven, and at the Amsterdam Laboratory for Legal Psychology at VU Amsterdam.
Research Focus
At the heart of my research lies a commitment to enhancing fairness and accuracy in the criminal justice system by examining the impact of human judgment and decision-making processes.
​
I focus on how vulnerable individuals can be disproportionately affected by a powerful legal system—especially in wrongful convictions—and how human factors such as stereotyping, confirmation bias, and irrelevant contextual information shape decisions at various stages of the criminal justice process. My work looks beyond judicial reasoning to include how cognitive biases can affect expert conclusions, such as those by forensic psychologists and forensic technical experts.
​
The seed for this line of inquiry was planted during my PhD, where I studied the reliability and validity of a youth risk assessment instrument in practice. That research sparked a broader interest in the implementation and quality of forensic psychological evaluations.
​
In current research, I continue to explore how judgments of professionals in the justice system can shape legal outcomes—both rightly and wrongly—and what conditions contribute to these effects.
Research Values
In my work, the applicability of research findings and their relevance for practitioners are paramount. I am attentive to implementation issues (e.g., my PhD project) and strive for accessible science communication. For example, the findings of my doctoral research were communicated to secure youth care services and practitioners via this information leaflet. These values also translate into my work as editor-in-chief of the online peer-reviewed magazine In-Mind that aims to make psychological science accessible to a broad audience.
​
Lastly, I embrace open science practices and the preregistration of studies, and I value (adversarial) collaboration. My Open Science Framework page can be accessed here.