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How Can Cognitive And Social Psychology Be Applied In Suspect Interviewing?

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In the recent times, psychology plays a key role in the justice system, specifically the application of psychological concepts to enhance policing performance. Under law enforcement role, the responsibilities of police such as investigation, interviewing and interrogation, detection, and negotiation are critical in policing responses. Cognitive and social psychology have been applied to enhance policing techniques especially for interviewing processes. The purpose of this essay is to critically explore how cognitive and social psychological methods can be applied in suspect interviewing. Firstly, the eminence of suspect interviewing will be demonstrated followed by the definition of cognitive psychology and social psychology. Theoretical implications of police interviewing will then be reviewed in terms of suspect interviewing. Finally, the justification of cognitive and social psychology will be highlighted in relation to their potential to be a promising approach for suspect interviewing.
What a crime occurs, police have to answer the following questions: what happened; where did it happen; when did it happen; how did it happen; and who has done it? The key focus for the police should be how to obtain sufficient information to answer these questions? And where would they collect the data from? The evidences from a crime scene are the best answer for police in order to reconstruct the incident and find out the suspect. In spite of that the evidences might be destroyed

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