Developments in Investigative Interviewing

Investigative Interviewing

• Complex task that requires

  • building rapport and trust

  • ask right questions at right time

  • Basic knowledge of human memory

  • Professional knowledge and competence

    • Not easily learned

• Helps get detailed account from cooperative interviewees

  • Issues can be addressed by interviewer

    • Building rapport

    • Provision of retrieval support (mental context reinstatement; memory compatible free report; non-leading cues/prompts)

    • Giving sufficient time and appropriate conditions for retrieval

    • Setting expectations for detail

    • instructions to promote completeness and accuracy

    • Giving interviewee control of the report

Investigative Interviewing - Cooperation

• Investigators and witness working together to get information

  • Cooperativeness = willingness to co-operate with investigation

• Investigator rely on

  • Witness memory

  • Witness cooperation

• Cost benefit analysis of cooperation

  • Crime witnesses cooperation – series of decisions

    • Decision to report crime – evidence of under reporting

    • Decision to report remembered crime information in the interview

    • Decision to act as witness in court

• For information to be disclosed there has to be some positive elements of appraisal

• Some benefit to the disclosure that outweighs the cost of reporting

  • Witness disclosure of information results from positive subjective appraisal of benefits outweigh the costs of cooperation

  • Conversely high costs with no perceived benefits of cooperation negatively affects disclosure of information

  • Interviewing techniques have the potential to influence interviewee’s disclosure by reducing perceived costs and increasing benefits

Investigative Interviewing - Cost benefit analysis of cooperation

• series of decisions

  • Decision to report crime

  • Decision to report remembered crime in interview

  • Decision to act as witness in court

• Has to be benefit to disclosure that outweighs the cost of reporting

  • Witness disclosure of information results from appraisal of benefits outweigh the costs of discoloured

  • Interviewing techniques can influence interviewee’s disclosure by reducing perceived costs and increasing benefits

Reluctant Witnesses

• Reluctant witnesses

  • can remember but unwilling to give detailed statements

  • due to motivational factors not cognitive limitations

• Prevalence of reluctant witness

  • 5-49% of reluctant witness reported by officers in England (Wheeler et al. 2017)

  • Netherlands, England and Sweden reported encountering uncooperative witnesses frequently (study)

  • consider lack of cooperation an obstacle to information elicitation

  • Witnesses have civil duty but not legal obligation to cooperate

Reluctant Witnesses - Cooperation

• Lack of cooperation in interview

  • Witness unwilling:

    • Intimidated

    • Hostile toward police

    • Resistant to engage with system

    • Reluctant to talk

Relectuant witnesses - Techniques

• Verbal

  • Unrelated topic

  • Little or well known information

  • incomplete information

  • Minimistaion pleas

• Passive verbal

  • Monosyllabic responding

  • Claiming lack of memory/knowledge

• Passive

  • Silence

  • Lack of engagement

• Active avoidance

  • humour to deflect

  • Minimal responding

  • Challenging the question

  • Denying the information

  • Fabricating information

  • Handicapping excuses

Reluctant Witnesses - Ministry of Justice Guidance

• Establish reasons for witnesses reluctance

• Special measures for intimated witnesses

• Build rappot

• No pressure on witnesses to speak to police

• Records – notes or video

• Advice and supervision

Rapport

• Building Rapport

  • rapport has been found to gain more detailed and accurate memory reports

• What is rapport

  • Lots of definitions but they are describing the same thing

  • Perception of having positive interaction, connection between two interactants

  • Working relationship between operator and source based on mutually shared understanding of goals and needs

Rapport - Witness interviews

• agreed that it important to conduct effective interviews

• rapport elicit significantly more detailed and accurate memory reports

• Rapport refers to ‘quality of the interviewer-interviewee interpersonal interaction

Rapport Building Techniques

• Verbal

  • Active listening

  • Showing personal interest

  • Reciprocity

  • Self-disclosure – stating you understand their experience (trying to understand the situation their in)

  • Empathetic responses

  • Use of interviewee’s name

• Non-verbal

  • Smiling

  • Head-nodding

  • Eye-contact

  • Open body language

• Para-verbal

  • Tone of voice

Self-administered interview

• Obtaining detailed accounts at the scene of an incident or shortly after

• Large number of witnesses at a crime

  • Identify key witness and prioritized for interview

  • Limited resources = delay before interview

  • In this period memory is

    • Prone to forgetting

    • Prone to distortion or error

SAI Content

• Explicit about what is expected from witnesses

• Instructions and questions that provide retrieval support

• Core mnemonic components from Cognitive Interview:

  • Mental Reinstatement of Context instructions

  • Report Everything instructions

    • Open ended report

• Non-leading cues and prompts

• Repeated warning about guessing

• Emphasis on providing accurate information

  • Sketch prompt

  • Other people or vehicles present

  • Witnessing conditions

• Distance

• Time spent encoding

• Obstruction

• Lighting

• Weather

SAI - Findings

• Empirical Research

  • Since 2006 the accuracy of this has been tested

  • It been translated into at least 15 different languages

• Overview of key findings

  • The SAI instructions produce significantly more correct information than a standard recall instruction – at equivalent accuracy rate

  • Completing an SAI after witnessing a (mock) crime:

    • Reduces forgetting over a delay

    • Maintains high accuracy rates

    • Preserves descriptive details

    • Protects against memory distortions caused by exposure

    • Enhances performance in a subsequent Cognitive Interview

SAI - Case Studies

• 8 key witnesses

• But also load of other witnesses

• 88% of selected witnesses completed an SAI

  • SAI identified three additional important witnesses

  • SAI allowed for extra charges to be brought

Timeline Technique

• Extracting information about ‘who did what and when?’

  • Better for linking people to action if multiple people were present ‘I was there but didn’t do anything’

• What is it

  • Initial reporting process to maximise memory

  • A self-administered technique designed to optimize an interviewee’s ability to

    • recall and report a particular time period in sequence

    • identify individuals involved

    • link those individuals with specific actions

  • Uses a ‘timeline’ of the relevant time period to provide a structure for remembering and reporting

  • Can be used to facilitate a comprehensive (initial) download’ of information for time periods of interest

Timeline Technique - Adaptability of ‘timeline’ approache

• Adaptability of ‘timeline’ approaches

  • Common ‘sense-making’ tool in investigation

    • timeline

  • Common technique in autobiographical memory research

  • Historical ‘timeline’ and calendar techniques (EHC) increasingly used technique in social and medical surveys

  • For autobiographical information, timeline formats enhance recall accuracy

    • Particularly when recall task is difficult

Timeline Approach - assist retrieval

• Memory search theories highlight the important role of temporal context for memory

  • Retrieval process is guided by internal context representation, produces organisation effects

  • Temporal-contextual cues play an important role in retrieval processes

    • Episodic memory systems stores information about temporally dated episodes or events

  • Allow people to write things down and put it where it fits on the timeline rather than trying to remember things in order and forgetting certain things that spring to mind

Timeline Approach - Recalling Multiple People

• Timeline technique helps reporting more correct information about who did what and when

  • Without externally generated memory cue or prompts

• Enhanced reporting of group conversations

What does SAI and timeline technique offer investigators

• Standardised multi-purpose reporting approach

  • SAI: major incidents, public order, road collisions

  • Timeline: extended or complex events involving multiple people or time periods

• Cooperative witnesses can provide initial accounts efficiently – without being led by interviewer

• Elicits relevant information with high levels of detail/accuracy

• Facilitates the effective prioritisation of witnesses and/or interviewee topics

• Can be used in combination with other good practice techniques (e.g. Cognitive Interview)