Rate My Professor Jennifer Cox

Jennifer Cox is a Professor of Psychology at The University of Alabama. She earned her B.S. in Psychology from the University of Mary Washington in 2007, M.S. in Psychology with a forensic emphasis from Drexel University in 2009, and Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Texas A&M University in 2014, with graduate studies focused on psychopathy assessment in forensic contexts and its effects on legal decision-making. She completed a clinical psychology internship at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C. Since joining The University of Alabama in 2014, she has progressed to full professor. A licensed clinical psychologist in Alabama, she maintains a private practice offering psycholegal evaluations such as competence to stand trial, mental state at the time of offense, sentencing mitigation, and violence risk. She supervises graduate students performing risk assessments for local law enforcement and psycholegal evaluations for the UA Criminal Law Clinic and Taylor Hardin Secure Medical Facility. She serves as Director of the Southern Behavioral Health and Law Initiative, co-founded in 2020 with Dr. Lauren Kois to unite UA researchers addressing criminal justice, policing, forensic mental health, health disparities, and public policy through community partnerships.

Dr. Cox's research explores factors shaping decision-making in the criminal legal system, including how personality traits, gender, sexual orientation, and psychological evidence like psychopathy influence legal judgments. Her scholarship on psychopathic personality conceptualization, assessment, and courtroom impact has earned over 1,500 citations and an h-index of 18. Prominent publications include 'Investigating the role of the Psychopathy Checklist–Revised in United States case law' (2014, Psychology, Public Policy, and Law), 'The role and reliability of the Psychopathy Checklist—Revised in US sexually violent predator evaluations: A case law survey' (2014, Law and Human Behavior), and 'How reliable are Psychopathy Checklist–Revised scores in Canadian criminal trials? A case law review' (2015, Psychological Assessment). In 2024, she received the Lahoma Adams Buford Endowed Peace Award for advancing justice, reducing disparities for those with severe mental illness, and fostering peace via research, teaching, training for justice officials, legislative contributions, and student mentorship.