This isn’t a side hustle:
Why Therapists Should Stop Trying to Profit Off the Forensic Population
Every few weeks, I see the same question pop up in therapist forums and Facebook groups:
“I’m looking for additional streams of income — has anyone worked with the forensic population? Is it lucrative?”
Each time, my stomach drops.
Because when we talk about people who are court-involved, incarcerated, recently released, or otherwise entangled with the legal system as a market, something essential gets lost.
We stop seeing human beings.
We start seeing opportunity.
And that is profoundly troubling.
The forensic population is not a niche — it is a community in pain
People involved in the criminal legal system experience trauma at significantly higher rates than the general public. Many have lived through childhood abuse, intimate partner violence, community violence, systemic racism, poverty, and chronic instability long before they were ever accused of causing harm. For many, the behaviors that later become criminalized were originally survival strategies.¹ ²
Once someone enters the system, the trauma doesn’t resolve. It compounds. Punitive responses, stigma, fragmented care, and barriers to humane mental-health treatment become part of daily life.³
Thus, this is not a business niche waiting to be filled. This is a public health crisis colliding with a human rights problem.⁴
When therapists step into this space primarily because it “pays well,” we risk becoming yet another institution that takes from people who already have the least.
“Forensic work” is highly nuanced — and casually entering the space can cause harm
Working with court- and system-involved clients cannot be treated like adding a new specialty tab to a website. It is layered, complex, and ethically demanding.
Such work requires a therapist who understands trauma as something that literally reshapes the nervous system, drives behavior, and affects attachment — not simply as a diagnosis on a chart.⁵
This work requires humility about power and coercion. People navigating the legal system are constantly being evaluated and controlled — by courts, probation, attorneys, institutions, partners, and sometimes their own families. Without awareness of those dynamics, we can unintentionally align with the system instead of with the person sitting across from us, further perpetuating harm, harmful bias, and re-traumatization.
Importantly, this work also requires fluency in the ethical realities of legal contexts: confidentiality limits, documentation risks, competing requests for information, and the impact our words can have on court outcomes. The field’s own guidelines warn clinicians to tread carefully here.⁶
And beneath all of this are our own biases — beliefs about punishment, guilt, deservingness, rehabilitation, and safety. If we don’t examine them, they shape our treatment decisions, our notes, and the way we speak about clients — sometimes with consequences that ripple far beyond therapy.⁷
When money becomes the motivator, the question drifts from:
“How do I show up ethically, carefully, and humanely?”
to:
“How can I build out this revenue stream?”
And the people who pay the price are those who can least afford another layer of harm.
Vulnerable communities should not be asked to fund our ambition
People navigating incarceration, probation, parole, supervision, reentry, immigration holds, or unresolved criminal cases are already carrying so much:
court fines and fees
unstable housing and transportation barriers
employment discrimination
fractured relationships and grief
limited options for truly trauma-informed care
To look at this population and think, “There’s a business opportunity here,” is not simply insensitive, it is exploitative.
Healing in this space should be driven by something deeper than revenue
This work must be rooted in dignity, justice, curiosity, context, and a belief that healing is possible even after immense harm — including harm done by systems.⁸ ⁹
Clinicians who belong in this work do not enter it because someone said it’s “high demand.” They aren’t responding to a FaceBook add promoting this “make money fast” training. They enter it because something in them refuses to accept broader systems efforts to dispose of people.
These therapists are willing to learn, to be uncomfortable, to challenge assumptions, and to recognize that trauma-informed, patient-centered care contributes to safer communities — not by punishment, but through real healing and stabilization.¹⁰
This work is service. It asks something of us, and in return, we give to it parts of ourselves. It should never — ever — be driven first by profit.
Yes — this work matters. But it is not a hustle.
Done well, therapy with justice-involved individuals can change lives, families, and communities. But only when it is grounded in ethics, humility, careful training, self-reflection, and deep respect, and not in the promise of “additional income streams.” If the primary draw to forensic work is financial, then this likely isn’t your lane. And that’s okay. But let’s stop marketing it as a quick, lucrative path. Real people live at the other end of our choices. They deserve clinicians who are there because they believe deeply in their humanity, not because they saw a business opportunity.
Footnotes
Wolff, N., & Shi, J. (2012). Trauma among incarcerated persons.
Messina, N., & Grella, C. (2006). Childhood trauma and women’s health outcomes in prison populations.
Fazel, S., & Seewald, K. (2012). Severe mental illness in prisoners worldwide.
Wildeman, C., & Wang, E. A. (2017). Mass incarceration, public health, and widening inequality.
Felitti, V. J., et al. (1998). Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study.
American Psychological Association. (2017). Specialty Guidelines for Forensic Psychology.
Link, B. G., & Phelan, J. C. (2001). Conceptualizing stigma.
DeHart, D. (2008). Pathways to prison: Impact of victimization in the lives of incarcerated women.
Richie, B. (2012). Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation.
Miller, N. A., & Najavits, L. M. (2012). Trauma-informed correctional care.