P3 - C.P. - Collection of Evidence (COG) Flashcards
Background
Police interviews
- There are two types of people that can be interviewed by the police: suspects and witnesses.
- Suspects are interviewed in an accusatory way, where the goal is to retrieve a confession from them if they are believed to be guilty.
- Witnesses are not suspected of a crime and so they are interviewed in a more open way to try to get them to remember as much information as possible.
Background
Interviewing suspects
- It was once considered acceptable to use physical force to try to get a confession out of suspects during a police interrogation.
- Today, the police use psychological rather than physical pressure to try to ‘crack’ suspects into giving a full written confession.
Fred Inbau and John Reid, authors of Criminal Interrogation and Confessions, (a book still widely used by police today) developed the ‘Reid technique’. - This technique contains nine steps for police interrogations to follow.
Background
Overview of the Reid Technique
- The Reid technique is based on the assumption that if you provide an unpleasant enough environment for the suspect, they will give a confession to escape the situation.
- With this in mind the technique encourages the police to be accusatory and to not accept denials or explanations from the suspect.
- An admission of guilt is achieved by presenting the suspect with two choices – both of which make the suspect seem guilty but with one being less moral than the other (e.g. did you mean to shoot him or did the gun go off by accident?)
- The nine steps in The Reid Technique can be used in any order and not all nine steps (apart from the first and final step) need to be used in every interrogation.
Background
Reid’s 9 steps
1. Positive confrontation – Tell the suspect that you believe without doubt that they are guilty.
2. Theme development – Present themes that try to explain why the suspect is guilty in a understandable way.
3. Handling denials – Never allow the suspect to deny their guilt.
4. Overcoming objections – Objections the suspect makes should be used as a way of making the suspect acknowledge their guilt.
5. Procurement of suspect’s attention – Personal Space and Eye Contact should be used to make sure the suspect doesn’t become withdrawn or quiet.
6. Handling passive moods – If the suspect becomes upset or defeatist, use this as a acknowledgement that they are upset they have been caught doing the crime.
7. Present an alternative question – Give the suspect two choices about what happened (both are guilty, however one appears more understandable than the other).
8. Get the suspect to make an oral confession of the crime.
9. Convert the oral confession to a Written Confession that can be used in court.
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Background
Criticisms of the Reid technique
- Although interrogation has been proven to get confessions from suspects, it has also been criticised.
- Gisli Gudjonsson is a Psychologist who has argued that interrogation techniques lead to false confessions (due to the psychological pressure put on them during interrogation).
- Reid and Inbau claim that this would be unlikely to happen, although there is evidence to the contrary.
- In 1975, six men from Birmingham were arrested and imprisoned on suspicion of carrying out IRA bombings. Despite these men making confessions, in 1991 their cases were overturned due to the fact the confessions were deemed ‘unsafe and unsatisfactory’.
Background
False Confessions
Gudjonsson (2003) states that there are several factors that lead to a false confession:
* Defendants who are very young or very old are more likely to make false confessions.
* Suspects arrested very suddenly or interrogated over a long period are more susceptible.
* Suspects who are ill, stressed or intoxicated are also at risk.
* Finally, the interrogation itself can create false confessions through leading questions and interview tactics.
From Gudjonsson’s work he developed the Gudjonsson Susceptibility Scale that can be used to predict how likely it is that a suspect will make a false confession.
Background
UK procedures
In the UK there are procedures to help prevent false confessions.
* All interviews have to be recorded and passed on to the police and solicitors, and a sealed copy must be not be tampered with.
* The copies allow for each interview to be scrutinised to ensure that they haven’t been too coercive.
* Furthermore, vulnerable suspects can have an adult assigned to sit with them during the interview as a source of support.
Background
Interviewing witnesses
- The aim of interviewing a witness (instead of a suspect) is to try to get them to remember as much information as they can, in as much detail as they can.
- With this aim in mind, police interviews use psychological techniques that are designed to increase the amount and accuracy of memory the witnesses recall.
- Link to Loftus & Palmer, & Grant
Background
Cognitive Interviews
The Cognitive Interview was developed by Ronald Fisher and Edward Geiselman.
This interview technique was based on two major psychological principles:
1. Context Dependent Memory – that recall is better when an individual has cues from the environment where they remembered it.
2. There is more than one way to retrieve a memory; if one retrieval cue doesn’t work then there are other cues that might.
Background
Cognitive Interviews: 4 retrieval techniques
1. Report everything – even if it seems irrelevant to the crime. These extra details can act as cues that may aid the memory of relevant information.
2. Recall in different temporal orders – Witnesses should recount the story in different orders instead of just beginning to end. They may be asked to start at the end and explain the story background. Doing this may cue participants to details they didn’t think of before.
3. Context reinstatement – witnesses can mentally place themselves at the scene by being asked to remember the environment (lights, smells and sounds) which might help aid context dependent memory.
4. Recall from different perspectives – The witness is asked to recall things from someone else’s perspective at the scene (e.g. another witness, the victim or the suspect).
Background
Cognitive Interview Strengths
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Fisher et al. 1989 tested the effectiveness of the cognitive interview - field experiment on 16 detectives from Florida.
1. The detectives’ police interviews on the job were recorded, they were trained in use of the cognitive interview and then their interviews were recorded again.
2. A team at the University of California then analysed the interviews for how much information was gathered. - They found that once the detectives had been trained in the cognitive interview they could obtain 47% more information than they had done previously and 63% more than other detectives not trained in the cognitive interview.
- The study revealed that the cognitive interview helps police officers get a higher quantity and quality of information from witnesses.
Background
The Enhanced C.I.
- In Fisher & Geiselman (1992) revised the cognitive interview into a more structured framework.
- Establishing a Rapport with the witness to make them feel at ease and comfortable with the officer – aiding memory recall.
- The witness should also be informed of what is expected of them in the interview as they may be unfamiliar with the process. This will also help to reduce their anxiety.
- Interview-compatible questioning is also a new addition ensuring that the officers match their questions to the aspect the witness is recalling rather than the whole event, to aid their recall.
- Witnesses can also be asked to sketch a plan of where the event took place to aid as another memory cue.
- Interviewers should also stay away from leading questions and focus more on open-ended questions.
Rapport = Social Cohesiveness with another (Interviewer)
Background
Criticisms of C.I.
- Time Consuming - especially true for the enhanced cognitive interview where building rapport takes time.
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Dando et al. (2009) has found that one of the key aspects of the cognitive interview, context reinstatement, is regularly not applied or delivered poorly (possibly due to the time-consuming nature of it).
However, one strength of the cognitive interview is its tested effectiveness at retrieving a higher quantity of accurate information from witnesses.
Key Research
HIGHAM & MEMON - Reviewing C.I. (Summary)
- The aim of this research was to present several pieces of research that had been conducted about the cognitive interview.
- It was hoped that presenting lots of research would help raise issues about the cognitive interview that should be considered.
There are four sections to the article:
- The effectiveness of components of the CI technique
- Comparison interviews
- Measures of memory
- Quality of training
Key Research
Context Reinstatement
Witnesses are told to remember everything about the environment where the crime took place.
* Milne (1997) has shown that this is a very effective part of the C.I. as this method alone gathers as much information as all four components of C.I. put together.
