Criminal - Collection of evidence Flashcards
Gudjonsson - Coerced Confessions (Background)
Argued the following 4 factors lead to the likelihood of false confessions:
1. The defendant: false confessions are more likely from the very young, the very old, low IQ and sufferers from mental disorders
2. The arrest: suspects arrested suddenly, violently or in the middle of the night, or interrogated for long periods at night
3. Mental/physical state: confessions are unreliable where the suspect is stressed, anxious, ill or intoxicated
4. The interrogation: the use of coercive, biased or leading interview tactics can encourage vulnerable suspects to make false confessions
Standard Interview (Background)
- Brewer (2000) arises this technique required little to no training
- Interviewers would be free to ask whatever they felt was relevant
- Often short answer questions, frequent interruptions and inappropriate sequences of questions formed on the basis of the problems in this type of interview
Fisher & Geiselman - Cognitive Interview (CI) (Background)
Includes the following stages:
1. Context Reinstatement: witnesses are asked to mentally take themselves back to the scene of the crime and imagine the noise, smells, the surroundings + internal state etc.
2. Report everything: witnesses are asked to recall everything they can from the event, regardless of how trivial or irrelevant it may appear to them
3. Narrative re-ordering: witnesses are asked to recall events in different orders, for example starting halfway through a sequence of events and then working backwards, or recalling the whole event in reverse order
4. Recall from different perspectives: witnesses are asked to describe the event as others present may have seen it e.g. as the victim, accused or other witnesses
Fisher (Background)
- Field experiment to test the use of CI in a real life setting
- Interviews with real witnesses by 16 detectives of a robbery division in Florida were carried out
- One group of detectives were trained to use C whereas the other group had no training
- 63% more information recorded in the trained group compared to the untrained group
- Concluded that the CI technique reliably enhances memory and is easily learned and administered
Memon & Higham - Overview
- Review article structured around 4 themes
- Comments are made on some of the theoretical and methodological issues to be considered in the Cognitive Interview + practical considerations relating to the use of CI in the field
Memon & Higham - effectiveness of components of the CI
- Make reference to their own piece of research where they found that when young children were questioned using only one component of the CI, there was no difference in the amount of info recalled
- Referenced Milne (1997) where she found that use of the full CI procedure produced more recall than all of the single component groups with the exception of the cognitive reinstatement group
- Concluded that context reinstatement is the most effective component of the CI, but all components are necessary in increasing information recall
Memon & Higham - comparison of CI with other interivews
- Initially compares CI to the standard interview and finds more differences between the two methods e.g. CI involves training while Standard does not and CI has a standardised procedure while Standard is subject to influence of individual differences
- Memon & Higham suggest that researchers should not use the Standard Interview as a comparison to the CI, but rather the Structured Interview
Memon & Higham - different measures of memory performance and the effect this has on research findings
- Most previous studies, performance is measured in terms of % of interview statements that are correct/incorrect but do not account for unreported information
- E.g. if a person is asked only to tell the truth, they may withhold information in fear they might not fully be telling the truth
- Concluded that further research is needed in order to improve the way interview techniques are measured in terms of unreported information
Memon & Higham - interviewer variables and the effect of training
- It is likely that differences in the attitudes, motivation and prior experience of the interviewers play a big role in determining the kind of results obtained with the CI
- Memon & Higham therefore suggest that for training:
- A 2-day training programme is recommended
- Policing forces should guide officers who have more potential to make good interviewers towards this training scheme and these roles
PEACE Interview (Application)
Train police with PEACE framework for interviews with both suspects and witnesses
Planning/Preparation: may involve simply defining the purpose of the interview + planning the list of points that need to be proved for an offence to have been committed
Engage + Explain: develop rapport and explain interview processes and procedures; they should also explain the purpose of the interview and ensure the interviewee feels at ease
Account: interviewer obtains interviewee’s full account of events with no interruptions, using questioning techniques such as summarising, empathising, repeating questions etc.
Closure: ensuring that the interview ends well so that the witness is comfortable to speak again in the future
Evaluation: evaluate if the information gathered is everything that they needed, ensuring that any inconsistencies are highlighted and followed up in the future.
Forensic Hypnosis (Application)
- Hypnosis is an artificially induced trance that resembles sleep
- Puts your mind into a pre-subconscious state in which your sense are supposed to be hyper-alert
- Slightly similar to context reinstatement
- Used to retrieve information that may not have been consciously available to a witness
Kalat - Forensic Hypnosis (Application)
- Reported that a hypnotised boy whose mother disappeared reported that he had seen his father murder his mother and chop her body up
- Although there was no other evidence, the father was sentenced to life imprisonment
- Some months later though the mother returned home unharmed
