Interviewing and confessions

What is the difference between techniques for interviewing in the UK vs the US?

In the UK the emphasis is on interviewing – collecting as much accurate information as possible
• Police and Criminal Evidence (PACE) Act tape recording of suspect interviews is mandatory, safeguards laid down for interviewing those with mental health issues or those deemed to be at risk

• In the US interrogation is more widely used – this is more aggressive and is aimed at securing a confession

Interrogations - US

The laws relating to the conduct of police when
interviewing and interrogating suspects vary
from country to country. However, common
tactics may be applied
• Inbau et al. (2013) recommend processes
such as:
• Small, bare rooms
• Interviewee has no access to controls
• Invasion of space
• One way mirror – checking for moments of
vulnerability
• For some suspects this may create psychological
distress or exacerbate existing psychological and
emotional conditions
• Cases vary around the world, but interrogations /
interviews result between 42%-60% confessions
in the US and UK, as high as 90% in Japan (Kassin
et al., 2004)

What are methods to elicit confessions?

Maximisation
• Scare tactics to intimidate the interviewee, overstating severity of crime and charges.
False claims about evidence

Minimisation
• Encourage a sense of security: sympathy, tolerance, offering excuses and justification, blaming the victim. Severity is downplayed

UK - PEACE technique

Developed in collaboration with police and researchers with, among others, the aim of avoiding false confessions
• Preparation and Planning (before the interview)
• Engage and Explain (legal factors and rapport building)
• Account (Clarify and Challenge) (open questions to
elicit an account of events)
• Closure (summary and amendments)
• Evaluation (reflection on effectiveness of theinterview)
• Gudjohnsson & Pearse (2011) PEACE
concentrates on fairness, openness, workability, accountability and getting to the truth. No fixation with achieving a confession
• Lying / fabrication is not permitted
• Clarke & Milne (2001) and Griffiths (2008) both reported problems: rapport building, summarising and planning, though rapport has improved in recent years (Davies & Beech, 2018)

Gudjonsson et al. (1994)

Interviewed 156 suspects at two London police
stations.

They found:
• 7% were suffering from mental health issues
• 3% had learning disabilities
• 3% were illiterate
• 2% had language problems
• In this sample, the police had summoned the presence of an appropriate adult in only 4% of cases

What are psychological characteristics of suspects?

Gudjonsson proposes that the following people are more prone to giving unreliable confessions:
• People with mental health issues (schizophrenia, depression)
• Unusual mental state (phobias, high anxiety, recent bereavement)
• Low intellectual abilities or specific learning difficulties
• Those scoring high on personality scales assessing compliance and suggestibility

When do voluntary false confessions occur?

A voluntary false confession occurs in the absence of any obvious external pressure from others
• Kavanaugh (2016) suggested possible reasons for this:
• the desire for notoriety
• mental health problems
• the desire to protect someone else
• not understanding the implications of confessing
• Kassin & Wrightsman (1985) also suggested:
• inability to distinguish between fact and imagination
• see no way of proving their innocence, aim to reduce severity of punishment
• the individual may feel guilty about a previous event in his life, and believe they deserve to be punished

When do coerced false confessions occur?

In contrast to voluntary false confessions, the essential element of a coerced confession is that the individual is persuaded to confess
• Gudjonsson and Clark (1986) suggested
that a suspect will come to an interrogation with a general cognitive ‘set’ that may be hostile, suspicious or cooperative
• This cognitive set will influence the suspect’s appraisal of the situation, and so affect the suspect’s strategy for coping with the interrogation
• The cognitive set the suspect adopts will be related to factors such as intelligence, level of stress and the degree to which the suspect has previous experience of police questioning

Why might coerced compliance occur?

This might happen for several reasons: The suspect might wish to:
• please the interrogator
• avoid further detention and interrogation
• avoid physical harm (real or imagined)
• strike a deal with the interrogator that brings some reward for making a confession

What is a coerced internalised confession?

The essential element in a coerced– internalised confession is the suspect coming to believe that their own memory for events is incorrect and that the police version must therefore be true.
• A suspect may develop a memory for having committed the crime OR people may come to falsely believe they committed a crime, even though they continue to have no memory of doing so.

What did Gudjonsson (1987, 1989, 1991) note about suggestibility?

• Developed the notion of interrogative suggestibility – the extent to which, during intense questioning, people accept information communicated by the questioner and so change their responses.
  • Situational stress, low intelligence, low self-esteem, fatigue and memory ability may combine to trigger the suspect’s suggestibility to misleading information – leads them to produce a false confession

False Confessions in Laboratory Studies

Kassin & Kiechel (1996)

Half the participants were confronted with a witness (a confederate) who told the experimenter they had seen the participant hit the ALT key. 65% then confessed to hitting the key.

Half were confronted with a witness who said they had not seen what happened. Only 12% then confessed to hitting the key.

What qualities are believed to make a good liar?

Vrij (2000) lists seven qualities that make a good liar:
• having a well-prepared story
• being original in what is said
• thinking quickly when the need arises
• eloquence in storytelling
• having a good memory for what has been said previously
• not experiencing emotions such as fear or guilt while lying
• good acting ability

Verigin et al. (2019) reported that self-reported good liars
• embed lies into truthful info
• keep things clear and simple
• provide accounts that are plausible

What criteria may indicate an account is ‘untruthful’?

the account may be unstructured and not presented in chronological time order,
but still be coherent
• there is reference to specific detail about events and people which is embedded
in a context (time & space), deceptive accounts may include less detail
• the reporting of subjective feelings
• spontaneous corrections and additional information, admitting a lack of memory
(truthful suspects are less concerned about impression management)
• a reference to offence-specific elements concerning the fine
details of the offence
• If fine details are missing, then one might suspect that the witness may be lying.

What is included in a statement validity checklist?

Validity checklist
• Assesses likelihood of suggestion
• Influence of others
• Lack of realism

The theoretical basis of this technique is that people’s accounts of events actually experienced are qualitatively and quantitatively different from fictitious accounts (Undeustch, 1992)