Criminal Justice Interrogation Techniques Have Evolved From A Crude Abusive Practice

“It is difficult to prove a causal relationship between permissible investigative and interrogatory deception and testimonial deception.  Police freely admit to deceiving suspects and defendants.  They do not admit to perjury, much less to the rationalization of perjury.  There is evidence, however of the acceptability of perjury as a means to the end of conviction.  The evidence is limited and fragmentary and is certainly not dispositive” (Skolnick, 1982).

Many of today’s interrogation models being utilized in police investigations have an impact on false confessions. The model that has been in the public eye recently is the social psychological process model of interrogation known as the “The Reid Technique.” There are two alternatives used by the police today to replace the Reid Technique, one is the PEACE Model and the other is Cognitive Interviewing. These methods are not interrogation techniques like Reid but interview processes.

Renegotiation of reality occurs when, by virtue of the institutionalized process of police interrogations, the suspect perceives that his initial reality holds no value to the interrogator or to the outcome of the interrogation, when he lacks agency to defend his reality, and when there is no other option. In this paper, I will illustrate how each of these factors facilitates false confessions and will use the Norfolk Four case as my vehicle for exploration and analysis.

To develop an experimental paradigm to study the influence of psychologically based interrogation techniques on true and false confessions.

Information is the lifeblood of a criminal investigation. The ability of investigators to obtain useful and accurate information from eyewitnesses of crimes is crucial to effective law enforcement, yet full and accurate recall is difficult to achieve (Stewart, 1985). Such elicitation of complete and accurate recall from people is important in many aspects of life; specifically, eyewitness recall may determine whether a case is solved. Principle advocates of the cognitive interview (Fisher, Geiselman, Holland & MacKinnon,

When questioning witnesses of a crime, detectives may choose a specific technique; one technique is the Reid Technique. The Reid Technique is a multi-step questioning method that pressures the witnesses or the accused to admit to the crime. It is used in North America. According to Professor Brent Snook, a psychologist at the Memorial University in Newfoundland, the Reid Technique is “Starsky and Hutch”, where two hot head detectives “beat up” their suspects to encourage them confess (http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/11/25/youre-guilty-now-confess-false-admissions-put-polices-favourite-interrogation-tactic-under-scrutiny/). This paper will examine the steps of the Reid Technique, as well as reveal substantial evidence that this technique should be banned. This technique has led to false confessions. Not only does this mean that someone has been punished that isn’t guilty, but it also means the real criminal has not been found and punished. The arguments against the use of this technique are the following:

Police interrogate suspects on a daily basis, but how can they tell if the confession is real? We have all heard, at one time or another of someone confessing to a crime they didn’t commit. Then your next thought is “I would never confess to something I didn’t do”. The only way you can be a 100% sure of that is if you have been through an interrogation before. This paper is going to define “confession” and tell how an innocent person will confesses to a crime they didn’t commit. This paper will also show the history of interrogations.

The first interrogation we watched in class was that of a 20-year-old named Joshua Tuttle. Mr. Tuttle was being charged with attempted unlawful sexual conduct with a minor. He was messaging and supposed to be meeting up with a girl named Jesse who he thought was 13 or 14. Joshua was the focus of a sting operation and has been featured on the television program “To Catch a Predator”. When we picked up on the interrogation, Joshua was sitting across the table from the interrogator. Joshua’s chair was pushed up against the wall and in the corner of the room. This is good because it is supposed to make him uncomfortable. The table that sat between Joshua and the interrogator was cluttered with papers. This is not good because this gives the suspect something to look at besides the interrogator, which in turn can change the suspect’s body language and or answers.

In the field of Psychology and Law, the undercover investigative technique of Mr. Big is very controversial. Psychologist Tim Moore, observes that, “In light of the invasiveness of the technique, it is coherent coercive nature and the strong inducements held out to elicit confessions, there is a real concern that the technique may cause innocent people to falsely confess, giving rise to a risk of wrongful convictions” (Moore et al., 2009, p.350). The article, Using The “Mr. Big” Technique to Elicit Confessions: Successful Innovation or Dangerous Development in the Canadian Legal System, assesses the Mr. Big operation and shows its concerns with the risk of false confessions for the innocent. This article shows that police officers use minimization

(2015), Cops are in charge of the primary component of the criminal equity framework: recognizing and capturing crooks. Cops accomplish these objectives through proactive policing, reacting to calls for administration, and exploring criminal movement. As a piece of criminal examinations, police audit wrongdoing scenes, meeting casualties and witnesses, gather and dissecting proof, and also cross examine potential suspects. Questioning suspects is a specific aptitude that obliges officers to be very prepared. All things considered, the part of an investigative specialist is to incite a man to give proclamations that are regularly not in his or her own best

Law enforcement, in some form, has existed for centuries and since its creation there has been numerous improvements. Improvements have come about because of community changes and the need for more effective ways of policing the people. As crimes became more fierce and complex so did the need for the investigation and solving of these crimes. Criminal investigative techniques were not just born from thin air, some thought and planning had to go into figuring out the proper ways to go about doing things. Pioneers of the criminal justice and criminal investigation field such as August Vollmer, Alphonse Bertillon, Edward Henry, and Edmond Locard have made superior contributions to the development of criminal investigative techniques. These techniques have impacted the way police operate today and set a substantial base for law enforcement to build on.

After the first step, the interrogator is to establish what’s known as a theme, or justification for the offence. Most themes are based on morality or deflection thereof. These themes are to be given in a sympathetic and understanding tone. Interrogators are encouraged to limit the suspects talking if any, suggesting a correlation between frequency of denial and persistency to innocence. At this point in the interrogation, the Model states anything that varies from “normal” behaviour infers guilt.

Almost everyone who has seen a cop television show or movie has heard the saying “You have the right to remain silent”. In America, people are raised to believe that the justice system never fails, and that no matter what happens justice will always prevail, though for some people this safety net has failed them. Since the late 1980s six studies have documented 250 interrogation-induced false confessions. Police-induced false confessions are the result of multistep process and sequence of influence, persuasion, and compliance. Imagine that a solider of the U.S. military is brought in for questioning, kept locked up for sixteen hours in an interrogation room, constantly threatened with the death penalty if they did not confess to the crime, and the whole time left without representation. In 1997 this was the case for four individuals from Norfolk, Virginia held without representation and forced to give false confessions.

One of the best training programs to implement into the police department is the Reid interrogation techniques. Interrogation and interviewing techniques became popular in 1947 by John E. Reid and Associates. Joseph P. Buckley stated that “The Reid Technique of Interviewing and Interrogation is now the most widely used approach to question subjects in the world (Buckley P. J., 2000).” There three- parts to the Reid process for solving a crime. The first stage that should be taking is to collect and analyze relative information from the crime scene thing that offers insight to the possible suspect and determine the direction an investigation should take. The second stage of the process interviewing people of interest using Behavior Analysis Interview (BAI) (Buckley P. J., 2000). The Behavior Analysis Interview is a non-accusatory process that allows detectives to interview a suspect using a question and answer procedure to provoke a suspect to show non- verbal truthfulness or deception. The third stage, if the offender has not admitted to the crime an accusatory interrogation is administered (Leave no marks, 2007). The Reid interrogation technique is believed to be a fail proof technique ,however, there are some reservations against using this technique on juvenile offenders (Constitutional Law(n.d). Implementing the Reid technique into the police departments learning curriculum will truly

In 1995, two criminal psychologists decided it was necessary to undertake studies into this particular area of eye witness testimonies. They felt the need to identify factors that must be taken into account when judging the value of the account given by the witness. Cutler and Penrod, after completing, their investigation into the subject they decided that there were seven main factors that must be considered. “A contrary finding is reported by Cutler, Dexter and Penrod (1990) who found that judges’ instructions failed to increase the scepticism . . . concerning eye witness evidence” (Feldman, 1993: p120)