Good Interviewing Practice Flashcards
Holmberg & Christianson (2002)
convicted supects’ views about the police interviewing. Many indicated that their interviewers displayed impatient, condemning attitudes, and a lack of empathy - ‘dominating’ styles. However, other suspects reported experiencing a more humane approach, and it was these whose confession rate was higher. Call into question usage of a dominating style
Des Lauriers-Varin & St-Yves (2006/2009)
men in a maximum security prison, 45% of whom had confessed. When asked what motivates suspects not to confess the inmates indicated that ‘negative attitude of the police officer’ and ‘lacking confidence in the police officer,’ were among the most important factors
Kebbell & Hurren (2005/2006)
sex offenders, what interviewers should do to increase the likelihood of a (genuine) confession: being compassionate, netural, clear, honest, and not making false accusations. When asked what would make confessions less likely the most common response was officer aggression
Soukara, Bull, Vrij, Turner & Cherryman (2009)
coded audio tapes of real interviews to see if the type of tactics employed (positive or negative) had an impact on changing position from denial to confession. They did gentle prods, not interrupting, handling mood, use of open questions, and disclosure of evidence. Negative tactics: emphasising contradictions, challenging suspect’s account
Goodman-Delahunty & Natalie Martschuk (2020)
56% of noncoercive strategies were associated with cooperation, yielding reliable information in 49.4% and true admissions in 20.0% of the cases. In contrast coercive strategies were perceived as more ineffective (58.9%) than effective (14.6%) in securing information. Physical coercion, intimidation and deception were most frequently acknowledged to yield false information
The 9 Steps of the Reid Technique
- positive confrontation
- theme development
- handling denials
- overcoming objections
- retaining attention
- handling mood
- creating opportunity to confess
- converting into written confession
- oral confession
Concerns with the Reid Technique
implications of pressuring suspects -> can cause distress, distrust of authorities, harbouring resentment
implications of deceit and manipulation -> trauma, unethical, false confession, inadmissable confessions
two parts of the Reid technique
interview and interrogation
purpose of interview in Reid technique
to gather information, watch for behavioural and linguistic cues of deceit, unstructured and non-accusatory
purpose of interrogation in Reid technique
active persuasion to tell the truth, conducted when reasonable certain of guilt, suspect is most vulnerable to interrogation following interview
purpose of conversation management
- facilitating the unwilling/resistant to disclose information
- commitment to ethical conversation
- goal is to obtain account of the events
- acknowledgement of barriers to disclosure
two parts of conversation management
account and challenge
what is conversation management and who created this technique
- Shepard, 1983
- ethical approach to interviewing, focus on rapport and conversation, developed for use on unwilling and resistant participants
five key element of conversation management
- control
- contact
- credibility
- content
- conduct
challenge element of CM
- after account
- clarification requests
- challenging inconsistencies and inaccuracies identified from other sources
account element of CM
- uninterrupted open questions
- clarify suspects account and obtain as much detail as possible
- suspect permitted to say what they want on their terms
- recollection of offence
elements of setting to consider when interviewing
location
questioning strategies
language
stereotypes and assumptions
individuals
setting: location
- avoid public crowded places
- privacy and surveillance
- presence of others who could influence or intimidate interviewee
- presence of other witnesses
setting: individuals
- cultural and social roles in gender dynamics
- sensitivity of disclosure to men
- trust