Is The Reid Technique The Best Solution?

In the US, police often use the Reid Technique during interrogations. This technique was designed to elicit confessions from suspects. However, this technique can also lead to false confessions. One such case was the case of Michael Crowe, who was accused of murdering his sister. Michael, who was 14 at the time, was questioned by investigators until he eventually confessed to the murder, which he did not commit.

“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.

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.

In recent years, there have been multiple high-profile cases of people being exonerated, often by DNA testing, after giving a false confession to a crime they did not commit. People who often fall into this trap are juveniles or those with a diminished mental capacity (Redlich, 2009). DNA testing has helped many innocent people that gave false confessions be free again. This trend brings up the question of how were they able to give a false confession.

The most known is the Reid Technique, which is the one we see in murder and crime shows. In the article "How Police Interrogate Murder Suspects." The article describes the Reid Technique as “an accusatory method that relies on signals like anxious body language to assess lying.” (The Guardian). The Reid technique is most common in tv dramas. It portrays suspects being interrogated in a dark room and accused of the crime, while the investigators reveal all the evidence and throw different questions every five seconds. While this technique may work for our favorite t.v. cops, in the real world some are unsure of the effects. Saul Kassin, a professor of psychology has his doubts about the Reid method and argues that, “...the Reid technique can increase the risk of false confessions, especially among young suspects or those with mental health issues.” (The Guardian). While this could be proven to be true, Mr. Kassin doesn’t have to worry. Investigators apply the method most effective for each individual case. One new technique, proven to make the suspects share more information, is called the HIG. Robert Kolker, an investigative journalist says, “...it barely feels like an oppositional interrogation at all. You're there to talk very, very little and to listen a lot and hopefully get the person to say so much that they end up contradicting verifiable information from other means.” (McEvers). The HIG method of interrogation basically focuses on the suspect talking and the interrogator asking few, but guided questions and letting the suspect ramble on, hopefully providing information vital to the case. In the interview between McEvers and Kolker, McEvers and Kolker also talk about how in big, natural lit rooms with carpet the suspects tend to share more. Studies also show if the suspect has a warm drink in their hand they are more likely to have a positive opinion of

What does it take to close a case? Investigators -- engulfed in a slew of incriminating evidence and having secured some extremely reliable witnesses is a substantial amount to put away a prime suspect. What can insure that a case is closed even more quickly is a confession from the suspect. This confession usually takes a certain amount of coercion, on the part of the interrogators, to achieve. Coercion is an interrogation technique that uses intimidation to get suspects to confess to crimes whether or not they are truly guilty of any crime. Some will argue that coercion is a brilliant method with which to incarcerate criminals with. Others will say that it is much more beneficial to conduct a full investigation instead of relying on a

* Suggest themes to minimise moral implications (e.g. understanding how the offender had to do what he did)

The purpose of a police interrogation is to obtain a confession, as well as gather evidence, while interviewing the suspect (Pozzulo, Bennell, & Forth, 2015). Though this is the overall goal of police interrogations, there are a few different interrogation techniques or models. A well-known and commonly used method in North America, is the Reid model of interrogation (King & Snook, 2009). The Reid model consists of nine different steps that work to counter the idea that accused individuals will not confess to their crimes because the fear of the possible consequences prevails over any anxiety that they feel when they are being deceptive and/or dishonest (Pozzulo et al., 2015). The Reid model tries to decrease this fear while increasing the

According to Forrest and Woody (2010), “False-evidence ploys raise particular concerns in the social science community because false-evidence ploys increase the likelihood of false confession in laboratory studies” (p. 9). Utilizing deception and trickery to gain false confessions from suspects will hinder an officer’s ethical decision making; furthermore, it can also create a lack of trust and confidence between the police and community they serve. When utilizing false-evidence ploys, there will be primary and secondary costs to society. False confessions are the primary cost for wrongful-imprisonment, and the wrongfully accused must suffer years or even decades of incarceration (Forrest & Woody, 2010). False confessions will also effect the community because the actual offender is still at large as police officers failed to apprehend the actual offender after a suspect untruthfully confesses (Forrest & Woody, 2010). The secondary costs of false-evidence ploys affect the legal system and society in various ways. First, deceptions that police officers utilize during interrogations could easily cause officers to lie in court proceeding, magistrates and internal affair detectives (Forrest & Woody, 2010). Secondly, deception will escalate anger in perpetrators who has been deceived and in return they will respond with great aggression and violence (Forrest & Woody, 2010). In order to prevent the aforementioned effects of false-evidence ploys, “defense attorneys should attempt to introduce an expert witness in the area of false confessions to educate jurors about the little-known, manipulative, and potentially deceptive nature of police interrogation” (Forrest & Woody, 2010, p.

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