The ethics of forensic professionalism is often couched in terms of competing individual and societal values. Indeed, the welfare of individuals is often secondary to the requirements of society, especially given the public nature of courts of law, forensic hospitals, jails, and prisons. We explore the weaknesses of this dichotomous approach to forensic ethics, offering an analysis of Psychology’s historical narrative especially relevant to the national security and correctional settings. We contend that a richer, more robust ethical analysis is available if practitioners consider the multiple perspectives in the forensic encounter, and acknowledge the multiple influences of personal, professional, and social values. The setting, context, or role is not sufficient to deter mine the ethics of forensic practice. The public forum—the root of the term “forensic”—provides a setting where individual welfare and social justice strain against each other. Professionals who work in public fora (i.e., forensic practitioners), labor in settings like courtrooms, correctional facilities, and national security agencies that raise one of the most painful dilemmas in professional ethics: whether their primary duty is to the legal aspects of their work or to the clinical and scientific standards they employ. The law determines many of the elements critical to forensic work, while the scientific and clinical professions socialize, train, and introduce practitioners to their craft. The public forum consequently provides the setting where these ethical and professional tensions play out. Nowhere is this tension borne out more poignantly than in questions of community security, namely in assessing individuals who may present a danger to those around them. Individuals committed or incarcerated, for example, as a danger to commit suicide, to terrorize, assault, assassinate, rape, or set fires raise harrowing concerns for their safety and the safety of families, neighbors, and children. Such individuals bear enormous scrutiny as society determines whether they can re-enter the community and face high thresholds for that re-entry. In such cases it is almost a matter of faith that legal, and indeed community, standards will trump other considerations. After all, the decisions are often made in courtrooms—presided over by professionals with legal, not clinical, training.