The changing face of police interrogation

This paper discusses some of the apparent changes in interrogations following the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and the introduction of tape recorders into police stations. These reforms are believed to have had several marked effects on interrogations. For example, the use of persuasive questioning is believed to have declined, as has the number of suspects making admissions. The evidence for these hypotheses is discussed. It is suggested that the apparent fall in confessions can be explained by methodological differences between studies and that the confession rate has in fact remained almost constant. Although there does appear to have been a change in the types of persuasive questioning employed during interrogations, it is difficult to establish whether or not the use of such questioning has declined. There is some evidence that persuasive questioning is now being carried out away from recording equipment.     

An emerging research agenda for investigative interviewing: hypotheses from the narrative action system

The present issue of JIP-OP brings together an intriguing range of papers that cover a wide range of aspects of testimony and aspects of investigative interviewing. They show how the considerations of how testimony is obtained is broadening out from the memory improvement strategies that once dominated this area with attempts to detect deception, to cover many aspects of how testimony is obtained. This draws attention to the need for more careful examination of the variations in testimony eliciting processes that will be responsive to differences in context and crime. A research agenda is therefore proposed that draws on developments in the understanding of psychological differences between crimes. This research would study the relationship between the psychological processes underpinning offence actions and the interview behaviour of suspects or witnesses. With regard to suspects, recent developments in the modelling of offence style have indicated a narrative basis (narrative action system model) for understanding the patterns of offence actions and the perpetrator's psychological background and characteristics that can be inferred from these. It is therefore suggested that the Hero's Quest, Professional's Adventure, Revenger's Tragedy, and Victim's Irony offending narratives and the Object, Vehicle, and Person victim roles assigned within these, may provide a fruitful link to different patterns of interview behaviour, with consequent implications for approaches to interviewing. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Rapport‐Building During Witness and Suspect Interviews: A Survey of Law Enforcement

Building rapport with adult witnesses and suspects is recommended by major investigative interviewing protocols (e.g., Cognitive Interview and the Army Field Manual in the USA and PEACE in the UK). Although recent research suggests that building rapport can sometimes benefit police investigations by increasing the accuracy of adult eyewitness reports and potentially enhance the diagnosticity of evidence obtained from suspects, little data exist regarding how law enforcement interviewers actually define and build rapport in real‐world investigations. To fill this void, the present study distributed a questionnaire containing open and closed‐ended questions to 123 law enforcement interviewers in police training courses to determine how they conceptualize and build rapport with adult interviewees. Results indicate that a majority of law enforcement interviewers define rapport as a positive relationship involving trust and communication, with a strong minority defining rapport as a ‘positive or negative’ relationship. Further, law enforcement interviewers reported building rapport with adult witnesses and suspects in a similar manner, often by using verbal techniques (e.g., discussing common interests via small talk) and non‐verbal techniques (e.g., displaying understanding via empathy and sympathy). Theoretical and applied implications of these results are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Field test of the Cognitive Interview: enhancing the recollection of actual victims and witnesses of crime

The Cognitive Interview was tested in the field to enhance the recollection of actual victims and witnesses of crime. The technique is based on laboratory-tested principles of memory retrieval, knowledge representation, and communication. Seven experienced detectives from the Metro-Dade Police Department were trained to use the technique and were compared with 9 untrained detectives. Before and after training, all detectives tape-recorded interviews with victims and witnesses of crime. The trained detectives elicited 47% more information after than before training, and 63% more information than did the untrained detectives. Overall collaboration rates (94%) were extremely high and were equivalent for pre- and posttrained interviews. Because the Cognitive Interview reliably enhances memory and is easily learned and administered, it should be useful for a variety of investigative interviews.     

A facet analysis of police officers' self‐reported use of suspect‐interviewing strategies and their Discomfort with Ambiguity

This study sought to establish: (i) whether tactics in police suspects interviews can be represented by two interacting facets (cognitive/emotional and coercive/facilitative) and (ii) whether a preference for coercive combinations are positively associated with Discomfort with Ambiguity (Kruglanski, 1989 ). Ninety‐nine police interviewers from the Crime Wing Headquarters of the Hong Kong Police completed a self‐report survey of preferred suspect interviewing tactics, as well as Chiu, Morris, Hong, and Menon (2000) version of the Need For Closure scale. Smallest Space Analysis (Guttman, 1968 ) revealed a duplex structure of cognitive and affective coercive/facilitative themes. Moreover, self‐report results indicated that high scorers on Discomfort with Ambiguity were more willing to use a wider variety of tactics (including more coercive cognitive and emotional tactics) than low scorers (who were more prudent in their constraint and willingness to stick with facilitative cognitive and emotional tactics). Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Intelligence gathering post-9/11

The gathering of information for intelligence purposes often comes from interviewing a variety of individuals. Some, like suspects and captured prisoners, are individuals for whom the stakes are especially high and who might not be particularly cooperative. But information is also gathered from myriad individuals who have relevant facts to provide, and occasionally the smallest details can be important. In gathering this information from both groups of informants, investigators need to worry about memory distortion, especially the extent to which memories can be contaminated by poor questioning or other sources of postevent information. Moreover, they need to worry about the potential for poor methods and other forms of influence to create false confessions, thereby leading investigators astray. A third area in which psychological science can contribute is in the detection of deception. Recent science in these domains can improve the quality of information that investigators gather and the inferences that they draw.     

The role of human memory processes in witness reporting

Obtaining information, from witnesses, about a crime is a key element inits investigation. As the quality and quantity of that information may becritical the quality of the interview is very important. This paper reviewsdevelopments in research into interviewing skills and describes researchbeing undertaken, with detectives, in The Netherlands.     

When should evidence be disclosed in an interview with a suspect? An experiment with mock-suspects

The question of whether to disclose evidence to a suspect early on, or later, in an interview is often of critical importance for police officers' interviewing strategies. To shed light on this issue, an experiment was conducted in which 95 participants each committed a mock-theft as a hidden ‘witness’ observed them. A statement from the witness was presented to them during a subsequent interview in which they were ‘suspects’. The time at which this evidence was disclosed to participants, and the evidence strength, was manipulated. Each participant was randomly assigned to one of four conditions; Early Weak, Early Strong, Late Weak, or Late Strong. Both late evidence disclosure, and strong evidence, produced higher confession rates than did early disclosure or weak evidence, and late disclosure of weak evidence resulted in the withdrawal of most of the confessions which had previously been made. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

To know where the bodies are buried: The use of the cognitive interview in an environmental scale spatial memory retrieval task

Missing body homicide cases have gained public interest globally due to some high-profile cases. In many of these cases, the task of locating the victim's remains relies on the information investigators can gain through the interviewing of willing suspects. To date, investigative interviewing research has largely focused on the retrieval of episodic memory (events) without focusing on spatial memory, a prominent cognitive task required in locating a victim's remains. The current experiment tests the enhanced cognitive interview (ECI) against a free recall strategy in a mock homicide scenario where participants are required to hide and retrieve an object in a natural bushland setting. The results showed that those in the ECI condition produced more coarse- and fine-grained details of landmarks and their actions at and journeying to the deposition site. This demonstrates the value of using the ECI in generating more valuable information to assist in successive search attempts.     

The flawed interview of a psychopathic killer: what went wrong?

The flawed interview of convicted killer Christopher Porco illustrates what occurs when a suspect's psychopathic traits are not considered in formulating an interview strategy. Specific areas of the dialogue between Christopher Porco and law enforcement demonstrates that traditional methods of interviewing may not produce a confession or valuable information when it comes to psychopathic suspects. Although the traditional goal of an interview is to obtain a confession or valuable information, law enforcement will have to display flexibility in the interview process by implementing alternative interview strategies and redefining what a successful interview is composed of when these suspects are unwilling to confess to their crimes. Failure to remain flexible, as displayed in the Christopher Porco case, which yielded neither a confession nor valuable information, can jeopardise the strength of a homicide case that ultimately may go to trial. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Collective interviewing of suspects

When people are interviewed about possible wrongdoing that has been committed in groups, they typically are interviewed separately. Yet, in several settings it would be more intuitive and convenient to interview suspects together. Importantly, such collective interviews could yield verbal cues to deception. This is the first deception experiment to investigate collective interviewing. Twenty-one pairs of truth tellers and 22 pairs of liars were interviewed pair-wise about having had lunch together in a restaurant. Given that truth tellers adopt a “tell it all” strategy in the interviews while, in contrast, liars prefer to keep their stories simple, we predicted that pairs of truth tellers would (i) interrupt and (ii) correct each other more, and would (iii) add more information to each other's answers than pairs of liars. The results supported these hypotheses. Theory-driven interventions to elicit more cues to deception through simultaneous interviewing are discussed.     

Detecting deception through small talk and comparable truth baselines

The present experiment investigates similarities in participants' nonverbal and verbal behaviours when responding to baseline and investigative questions, comparing two different types of baselines. Police literature suggests to obtain a baseline through small talk, whereas academic literature underlines the importance of baseline and investigative themes to be comparable. First, a baseline was obtained (either small talk or comparable), then the investigative questioning started. During the investigative questioning, participants either truthfully reported a set of actions they had actually performed or lied about them. Findings revealed that truth tellers and liars in the small talk condition did not differ in their level of similarity when responding to the baseline and investigative questions. In the comparable truth condition, levels of verbal similarity between the baseline and investigative questions were higher for truth tellers than for liars, but only for one variable: spatial detail. Results therefore showed that a small talk baseline should not be used to assess interviewees' credibility, and that a comparable truth baseline, although better than a small talk baseline, is still problematic.     

The marriage checkup: An indicated preventive intervention for treatment-avoidant couples at risk for marital deterioration

Prior to dissolution, it is likely that couples that become severely distressed first pass through an at-risk stage in which they experience early symptoms of marital deterioration but have not yet suffered irreversible damage to their marriage. It is during this “at-risk” stage when couples might benefit most from early intervention. In response to this need we have developed an indicated intervention program called the Marriage Checkup (MC) based on the principles of motivational interviewing. The current randomized study provides preliminary evidence for the attractiveness, tolerability, efficacy, and mechanisms of change of the MC.     

The influence of suspect ethnicity and evidence direction on alibi credibility assessment

We investigated whether evidence direction (incriminating versus exonerating) moderated the influence of intergroup bias on alibi credibility assessments. Israeli-Jewish participants (n = 160) assessed the credibility of an alibi statement provided by either an Israeli-Jewish or an Israeli-Arab suspect. Along with the alibi statement, half of the participants were presented with incriminating evidence, while the other half were presented with exonerating evidence. The results indicated that evidence direction influenced credibility assessment regarding both in-group and out-group suspects. Specifically, under incriminating evidence, Israeli-Jewish suspects were perceived as more deceptive than Israeli-Arab suspects, whereas under exonerating evidence, no such differences were found. These results emphasize the significance of group bias in assessing the credibility of alibi statements.     

Countermeasures Against the Strategic Use of Evidence Technique: Effects on Suspects' Strategies

As the Strategic Use of Evidence (SUE) technique becomes more widely taught to practitioners, it is important to investigate possible countermeasures to the technique. It is possible that guilty suspects who are aware of the SUE technique will employ forthcoming verbal strategies to make themselves appear innocent. Mock suspects committed a richly detailed simulated transgression (or a benign analogue) and were interviewed about their activities. Prior to questioning, some suspects received information about SUE tactics the interviewer was likely to use. Guilty suspects who were informed about the SUE technique employed more verbally forthcoming strategies than their uninformed counterparts. Guilty suspects who were given SUE information also reported planning for the interview in different ways. However, guilty‐informed suspects did not become as forthcoming as innocent suspects overall. In sum, it appears that information about the SUE technique induces guilty suspects to alter their strategies, but only to a relatively small degree.Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.