Shamala Gopalakrishnan

Shamala Gopalakrishnan holds a master’s in Clinical Forensic Psychology from King’s College London. She is also an Associate Lecturer with the Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS), teaching the module on ‘Working with Special Offender Populations’ as part of the Master of Psychology (Forensic Psychology) course. She is currently Senior Assistant Director/ Lead Psychologist with the Home Team Psychology Division (HTPD) at the Ministry of Home Affairs. Her main focus area is looking into prevention strategies to prevent sexual offending. For the last three years, she headed a team of psychologists & collaborated with multiple stakeholders, including youths & community partners, to develop & implement tools for prevention against youth sexual offending. These tools include resource guides on the early identification & intervention of harmful sexual behaviours & online sexual harms including the problematic consumption of psychology. Prior to joining HTPD, Shamala worked as a prison psychologist at the Singapore Prison Service (SPS) for 8 years. There, she conducted risk assessments & interventions for both adult & youth offenders with violence & sexual violence offending behaviours. Shamala also contributed to the adapted implementation of evidence-informed assessment and intervention practices to rehabilitate young sex offenders within SPS. She was part of a pioneer research study on young sex offenders that was presented at the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (ATSA) in 2014. She also co-authored a chapter, ‘Interventions for sex offenders who target child victims’ for the book Child Sexual Abuse (pp. 553-603), Academic Press.