The Reid Technique, By John E. Reid

In the Criminal Justice system, the main goal is justice or in other words, a fair consequence to match a criminal action. An obvious, yet unmentioned underlying goal is to prevent injustice. Many times, justice prevails, and this is why our system prevails today. However, when justice fails, it is key to look at the information offered in order to better the system and to repay those that have been failed by it. One area that has shown itself as flawed is the area of interrogations though many other areas will be presented throughout this paper as well. By examining five cases involving questionable interrogation and showing other system flaws, I will enlighten others as to how our justice system handles its flaws, and hopefully I will

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.

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.

“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.

The officers that interrogated Cathy Woods used the Reid Model which is a nine step model of interrogation that is used to extract false confessions from suspects (Bennel,Forth,Pozzulo). The Reid model is the most used form of interrogation in the United States but has problems because the way it’s used puts a lot of stress on the suspects to confess to a crime they may not even have committed. For example, having interrogations that are hours even days long and denying suspects food, water and even being able to use the bathroom will make people confess just to end the interrogation, which is what happened to Cathy Woods. Cathy Woods’s false confession falls into the Coerced-compliant category because she confessed to a crime she knew she didn’t commit, but did it anyway to end the interrogation. Cathy Woods also vulnerable to false confessions because of her mental illness. To avoid false confessions such as Cathy Woods there must be safety nets in place that would be able to capture these inadequate interrogations. For instance, Saul Kassin a distinguished Professor of Psychology suggests we record all interrogations and have it reviewed by a judge before a trial starts. This way our chances of catching a false confession goes up and we can avoid people who are innocent from serving harsh

Cassell, Paul G. "Protecting The Innocent From False Confessions And Lost Confessions - And From Miranda." Journal Of Criminal Law & Criminology 88.2 (1998): 497-556. Academic Search Complete. Web. 2 Nov. 2014.

This particular study is captivating because it narrows down the causes of wrongful convictions of innocent people, whether it’s the interrogators applying inappropriate methods of the Reid Technique, such as misclassification, coercion, psychological manipulation, and contamination. (Orlando) “The Reid Technique of interrogation consists of essentially three steps. Custody and isolation (i.e., the suspect is detained and isolated, anxiety and uncertainty are generated in order to weaken resistance). Confrontation (i.e., the suspect 's guilt is assumed and he or she is confronted with alleged incriminating evidence that may or may not be genuine; denials are rejected, even if they happen to be true, and the consequence of continued denial is emphasized), and minimization (i.e., the interrogator tries to gain the suspect 's trust and provides face-saving excuses for the crime, including suggesting that it was an accident or that the victim deserved it) (…) During the interrogation the investigators use tactics of imbedding trust to lure detainees to comply and achieve a legal outcome which could lead to reducing longer sentencing if the detainee confesses. Also if there are multiple co-perpetrators investigators look to probe the detainee that someone has cast blame on the individual, so therefore they must engage with the police and own up to their part in the crime (Douglas & Rita). The Reid Technique not only is it used illegitimately but it placing innocent individuals

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

The Kirby- Bauer method is used to test antibiotics sensitivity to the microbe. Some antibiotics have broad-spectrum effect, which means they inhibit the growth of more than one microbe; while narrow spectrum only have an effective on one group of microbe. In order for this test to be effective a lawn of bacteria has to be made on Mueller- Hinton agar. This agar does two amazing things in the world of science. It contains a starch that makes it test plate transparent (easy to read results) and it control the rate of diffusion of the tested drug. Ampicillin, Gentamicin, Gentamicin, penicillin, and vancomycin are the fours types of antibiotics that were use to test the sensitivity of the microbe to them. The microbe was resistant to Ampicillin;

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