Interrogation And Deception Essay

Of these are: To highlight the isolation and unfamiliar surroundings, the manuals instruct the police to display an air of confidence in the suspect's guilt and from outward appearance to maintain only an interest in confirming certain details (2). Such tactics are perfectly established to strip an individual of his innocence and make him give a confession thus incriminating one’s self. Therefore, such practice of interrogation and the secrecy it entails, is drastically contradicting in nature with the constitution, in that an individual may not be compelled to incriminate one’s self.

Minimization and maximization interrogation techniques are two categories that are widely used in order to gain a confession. However, maximization techniques are misrepresented and it is believed that they are used in order to scare suspects into confessing, and may even include evidence that was manufactured by the interrogator, which could lead to false confessions (Russano, Meissner, Narchet, & Kassin, 2005). This is not the case. Maximization techniques are used as a way to obtain a confession once the interrogator is certain that the suspect is indeed guilty. This can include a variety of different tactics, but can not include direct threats or manufactured evidence. This misconception about maximization techniques also does not take into account that the court will not accept a confession if they see it as being induced by a number of things, including direct promises, and threats or actual harm. As Kassin et al., (2010) explain, maximization is usually combined with minimization, and that maximization is usually the last resort in order to reduce the

“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.

As the video evidently shows, the overall case was fabricated with the use of psychological tactics that broke some fundamental aspects of ethics. Getting one to confess to a crime is never easy, hence borne the numerous methods introduced and followed by almost all law enforcement officers to “read” possible suspects during interrogations. Further, with the right assembly of personal/background information, the combination of circumstances/techniques, and psychological manipulation can even make the most hardened suspect to confess (“How Police Interrogation works”). To add on, there was a time when “physical abuse” toward the possible suspects during interrogations and the confession obtained thereafter was accepted in court (“How Police Interrogation works”); Not only is this a misuse of authoritative power, but also unethical—inflicting mental /or physical pain upon the individual to confess almost seems extreme.

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.

For a society that is greatly influenced by Crime Scene Investigation, Criminal Minds and Bones, a confession of the offender is seen as an ultimate checkmate of the case because it implies the guilt of the confessor. Thus, a confession, especially the ones with detailed account and perfect representation of emotions (Leo, 2008), outweighs the evidences of innocence and stirs the case against the accused (Kassin & Wrightsman, 1985). People believe that they are open-minded about the possibility of false confession but in reality, the public, law enforcers and justice officials have biases that often infer guilt to the suspect instead of investigating for the truth, which leads to wrongful conviction. According to Leo and Drizin (2004), false confession is the primary cause of law miscarriage (Leo and Drizzin, 2004). False confessors lived many years in jail before being exonerated while others remain imprisoned (Leo and Drizzin, 2004).

Deception According to Hyman (1989) deception implies that an agent acts or speaks so as to induce a false belief in a target or victim. Deception can occur in everyday life. Whether it is telling someone they look nice or not telling them that they look fat. This is an important process for forming relationships and general social interaction.

Interrogation, by definition is a “guilt-presumptive process…to extract a confession” (Leo, 2008, p. 9). Officials use interrogation techniques, legal and illegal, every day to elicit confessions. According to Yeschke (2004), extensive interrogation techniques were put in place in the late twentieth century because John Rawls believed it was necessary to have social rules to help the luckless. Rawls put individual rights ahead of the common good and believed that human nature should have the capability to freely choose their own ends. Rawls also believed that interrogation tactics were designed to help the accused rationalize and save face (Yeschke 2004). Today, there are lines, both moral and constitutional,

Even in the case of presenting false evidence, like DNA, fingerprints or video recorded material in order to get a confession from the suspect, participants found this procedure extremely coercive but apparently not coercive enough to elicit a false confession. According to above results, it seems that potential jurors do not seem to realize that there is a very important connection between coercive interrogations and false confessions. If jurors cannot be open to the idea of a false confession being a product of a psychological pressure under interrogation then this would definitely have a critical impact on the outcome of a trial.

Interrogation- questioning a suspect or witness by law enforcement authorities. Once a person being questioned is arrested, he/she is entitled to be informed of his/her legal rights, and in no case may the interrogation violate rules of due process.

One of those things is the way that interrogations are done. A lot of interrogators come in with a guilt bias and go into the situation with the goal of gaining a confession. This may cause a lot of innocent people to get convicted of a crime they didn’t commit.