About CFN
The Centre for Forensic Neuroscience was founded to meet the ever increasing demand from both defence lawyers and prosecutors for neuroscienfic evidence. With the advent of ever more powerful brain scanning technology the use imaging, and other neuropsychological, evidence in Court has become a destinct reality. Thus jurors may now be asked to consider abnormal brain functioning with respect to criminal responsibility. Thus brain anomalies are becoming a vital and primary area of evidence for legal mitigation. Furthermore, neuroscience is also having an impact upon investigational practices, with the introduction of artificial intelligence-based and brainwave profiling detection of deception technologies.
CFN's founder is Dr Keith Ashcroft who is the Managing Director, and a Consultant Forensic Psychologist. He routinely provides psychological reports in both civil and criminal cases and gives evidence in Court. He has been instructed over the past 8 years by the Crown and Appeal Courts, Sheriff Courts and the High Court of Justiciary throughout Scotland; and by the Crown Prosecution Service and criminal defence lawyers in England and Wales.
Dr Ashcroft has experience in working with the Police and Prison service, and accepts instructions in criminal cases for both adolescents and adults, with a specialist interest in sexual crimes, and crimes of violence. He will also consider instructions for civil cases (either as a single or joint expert) for pursuers or defenders in road traffic and industrial accidents litigation. He can be consulted on a variety of interview technologies to determine malingering and deception, which include: Adaptive Profiling Systems, Polygraph - Lie Detection and Deviant Sexual Interest examinations (PPG), in criminal, clinical and employment cases.
Dr Ashcroft is listed in the 'Directory of Expert Witness' which is maintained by the British Psychological Society, the representative and regulatory body for psychologists in the UK. He is also a full member of the British Association for Cognitive Neuroscience; the Neuroethics Society; the National Association for the Treatment of Abusers; the British Society of Experimental and Clinical Hypnosis and the International Society for the Study of Multiple Personality and Dissociation.