The Difference between Interviews and Interrogations

2. List the questions raised about this situation or that you think that the investigators should ask of

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.

When a law enforcement officer or other public employee is accused of potentially criminal conduct, they may face three different kinds of interviews or interrogations. If an officer is interviewed as a criminal suspect, they have the absolute right to decline to answer any questions, or to insist that they have a lawyer of their choosing to attend the interview. The first is type is during a criminal investigation; the second is during a disciplinary investigation and finally during the course of civil litigation where there has been damages. During a criminal interview, there is no professional, ethical or moral duty to participate especially without the assistance of an attorney to represent the officer under investigation. It has come to a surprise that many experienced officers will waive their right to silence and give the investigators an audio recorded statement. Some of the inexperienced criminals do not make incriminating statements. The motive for cooperation is to avoid unfavorable publicity.

Some general information that the investigator must have knowledge of is The Model Penal Code. The definition for The Model Penal Code is a person is guilty of robbery if they inflict serious bodily harm on another person, threatens or intentionally puts victim in fear of serious bodily injury, or commits or threatens to commit any felony of the first or second degree. Because theft or attempted thefts are the elements of robbery the investigator must have the knowledge to define those elements properly to investigate the case in the proper manner. To thoroughly investigate a robbery and have a successful prosecution the interview must be carefully developed in terms, sequence of individuals involved, and the questions asked should be in sequence. A category plan is used to help determine the interview plan. Physical factors such as age, injury, and race; emotional/physiology factors such as ego and attitude toward police; are all part of the category used to determine the interview plan. Another ethical consideration when investigating robbery is conducting the investigation by the proper protection and search measures of the crime scene. Footprints, fingerprints and fiber traces, saliva, body secretions such as fibers on clothing, trace material from victim on the suspects clothing, physical evidence from where a weapon is recovered, blood samples

This method is used exactly the same on both adult and juvenile offenders and it not adjusted to the fit the differences between them. PEACE is a form of investigative interview that is formulated to acquire information rather than gather a confession from a suspect. PACE required all interrogation conducted by police to be recorded. The differences between youths and adults is recognized by PACE and an adult is mandatory to be present during the interrogation of a juvenile. (Feld, 2013)

In an investigation, an investigator must find ways to recreate an event that had taken place. In order to do so an investigator must talk to witnesses and victims of the crime. Witnesses could include those who either heard or saw something. Many witnesses may not come forward so an investigator may need to ask people who live around the area or people who work around the area where the event took place. An event can also be recreated from the evidence that was gathered from the scene of the crime. With both the statements from the witnesses and the victims along with the evidence from the scene, the investigator must put all of the pieces together and recreate the event that had taken place (Adkisson, 2011).

The victim services professional I interviewed was Rene Carter, victim/witness assistant with the Cumberland County’s District Attorney’s Office. The criminal justice agent I interviewed was Detective M. Wooten, with the Fayetteville Police Department. Detective Wooten is a detective and has worked in different divisions of investigation to include property unit, person’s unit, robbery unit, and aggravated assault unit. Each person was asked the same question and the following are the answers to those questions:

After investigating the crime scene, the investigator should run the victims information through the police database to see if he/she had any previous convictions. Learning that the victim has been to prison before can open up a whole new list of suspects and motives. After concluding with the background search, the investigator should search for any close living relatives or acquaintances that can provides the victims family background, employment history, close friends, and if any, enemies. The victim's residence would also be processed after receiving a search warrant. Any and all calendars with appointments, phone messages, voicemail, and answering machines would be processed. Information from bank statements and other financial information located at the victim's residence would also be processed. This would be used to trace an individual's movement through the use of their credit cards. Where they were prior to the crime might be traced through the use of their credit cards. Interviews with the staff of

When the interviewer prepares for the interview, they will come up with multiple reasons why the accusations of abuse may have happened. During the interview, questions will be posed in a non-leading way to narrow down which hypothesis is the most viable (Forensic, p. 1).

After a individual is apprehended, a pretrial services or probation officer of the court directly interviews the defendant and conducts an investigation of the defendant's backdrop. The data got by the pretrial services or probation

The procedure should accomplish that each type of physical evidence, whether an intact object, pieces of an object, blood, glass, liquids, or gasses, must be collected, marked or tagged, packaged, transported, and stored properly to be later admitted in to evidence in court. The maintaining proper chain of custody is particularly important when the object is one that is not unique or when questions could be raised about changes in the condition of the object, unique or not. Upon arrival at a crime scene, the officer should first quickly determine if anyone is injured or needs medical treatment and, if so, summon the health professionals. Then the officer should survey the crime scene, quickly determine whom to interview, and move nonessential individuals out of the area. The crime scene area should be cordoned off or otherwise closed to nonessential individuals.

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.

In the first day prosecuting attorneys were assigned witnesses for direct and cross examination. I was responsible for preparing direct questions to the police officer who was first to arrive at the crime scene. Based on his statement I came up with multiple questions which allowed to determine the events and condition of the victim on that date. While preparing both direct questions and cross examination questions I watched videos of actual court hearings where attorneys questioned witnesses. This approach helped a lot. After coming up with direct questions, which for me the process was interesting and intriguing, I asked my group members to review them and give their feedback. Questions for cross examination gave me most trouble. I found it complicated to come up with sufficient and proper questions in order to question the witness and find the best possible way of subjecting his statement. Videos, both presented in class and ones I found myself did not resonate well with me. Despite that, I uploaded my cross-examiantion questions and asked for the

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

Interviewing is a procedure which recounts to a controlled situation in which one person asks a chain of questions to another person, relating to a