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
setting: language
- speak clearly and directly
- simple language, clarity
- conscious of tone and pacing
setting: questioning strategies
- allow interviewees to tell the story in their own way
- repeat words, clarify
- consider age and background of interviewee
PEACE model
Preparation and planning
Engage and explain
Account
Closure
Evaluation
types of questions
free narrative
open questions
multiple questions
leading questions
closed questions
probing questions
which question types are poor practice and why
leading and multiple questions
multiple: too much demand on cognitive resources (overwhelm)
leading: suggesting the answer
which question type produces the most accurate data/information
open questions (rely on recall with little influence and interruption)
uses and applications of cognitive interview
- attempts to improve witness memory performance by using various techniques
- derived from cognitive psychology to gain as much correct info without jeopardising quality
two components of cognitive interview
multicomponent memory traces
encoding specificity principle
multicomponent memory traces
there are several paths to retrieve a memory, info accessible by one route may be available by another (Tulving, 1974)
encoding specificity principle
a memory contains several features and a retrieval cue is effective to the extent that there is overlap between the encoded input trace and the retrieval cue (Thomson and Tulving, 1970)
techniques used in cognitive interview
- recreating original context
- encouraging recall of all details
- encouraging recall in different orders and from different perspectives
- listening skills
advantages of cognitive interview
- significantly more accurate information obtained through this application
- allows interviewee to be in control and present their information in a way that is more compatible with their memory
disadvantages of cognitive interview
- limited in events where violence plays a significant part in the event
- may not influence the recall of highly emotive events because the use of some techniques may be too traumatic
- may only be significantly effective for events which are rich in detail
types of disclosure of evidence
early (evidence disclosed at the start of the interview before questioning)
late (gathering the whole of the story from the suspect before presenting the evidence)
gradual (phased presentation of information/evidence, provided in a drip feed fashion throughout the interview)
early disclosure (names)
Sellers & Kebbell, 2009
gradual disclosure (names)
Grahag et al, 2012
late disclosure (names)
Hartwig et al, 2005
effectiveness of early disclosure
- may result in suspects incorporating evidence/information presented into their portrayal of events (Gudjonssen, 2003)
- knowledge of what evidence police possess may allow for the creating of false accounts which incorporate this information (Read et al, 2009)
- rarely achieves PEACE objectvies
effectiveness of gradual disclosure
- less effective over time with repeat offenders (Grahag et al, 2015)
- incremental disclosure may lead to passive compliance and in the worst case, can elicit false confessions (Sorochinksi et al, 2014)
- deferred gradual vs reactive gradual (Walsh & Bull, 2015)
effectiveness of late disclosure
- mixed research: is late disclosure even feasible?
- investigators frequently fail to cover all information and alibis in their preceding questioning before presenting evidence (Walsh & Bull, 2015)
most effective type of disclosure and why
gradual: Walsh & Bull (2015) found that less experienced interviewers used late and early disclosure
% of suspects that make a confession (Memon et al, 2003)
49-61%
most frequent tactic that elicits confessions (Pearse & Gudjonssen, 1996)
introduction of evidence, 75%
three types of false confession
voluntary false confession
coerced-compliant false confession
coerced-internalised false confession
voluntary false confession
- need for notoriety
- cover up for someone else
- avoid further investigation
- need to relieve guilt
coerced-compliant false confession
- suspect makes a confession that they know not to be true and continue to believe so
- change in behaviour without change in attitude
coerced-internalised false confession
- a suspect comes to believe during the interview that they must have committed the offence
- change in attitude and behaviour
- more convinced of their guilt
how to avoid a false confession
- avoid psychological manipulation and deceit
- solicitor presence
- recording interviews
- identify vulnerable people
- corroborative evidence
detecting a false confession
- critical evaluation
- intimate knowledge
- consistencies and impossibilities
