Article · Vol. III, No. 1 — Winter 2026
Trauma-Informed Procedure and Its Discontents
David Halloran
Visiting Scholar, Harvard Law School
November 9, 2025
Abstract
Reforms grouped under the heading of trauma-informed procedure have spread rapidly through American criminal justice. This Article asks whether the empirical premises on which those reforms rest can bear the doctrinal weight now placed upon them.
The category 'trauma-informed' has, in roughly a decade, moved from clinical practice to police training to judicial conferences to the language of appellate opinions.1 Its rise has been faster than the underlying research, and its doctrinal applications have outpaced any settled understanding of what the science actually supports.
Footnotes
- 1.See Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score (2014). ↩
Suggested Citation
David Halloran, Trauma-Informed Procedure and Its Discontents, Cognition Review Vol. III, No. 1 — Winter 2026 (2025).