The Reid Vs. Reid Essay

While people find it hard to believe that anyone would confess to a crime he or she did not commit, there are people who end up making a false confession. In the Central Park Five case, the police managed to get the young boys to admit to the crime with the false promise that they would be allowed to go home if they confessed (Kassin, 2002). For Martin Tankleff, while in an

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.

Wakefield, H. & Underwager, R. (2014). Coerced or Non-voluntary Confessions: IPT Library Resources. Retrieved October 19, 2017, from

There are three processes that are vital to the Reid technique and they are isolation, confrontation and minimization. The isolation is to create anxiety in an individual so that they feel a need to get away. The confrontation process is when the suspect is accused of a crime. Finally the minimization process is when an investigator uses sympathy to help the suspect justify the crime giving them a way to admit to it. Needless to say there are three reasons for people being pessimistic about the ability of others in deciding who is lying and who is telling the truth.

“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.

Wrongful convictions are common in the court-system. In fact, wrongful convictions are not the rare events that you see or hear on televisions shows, but are very common. They stem from some sort of systematic defect that lead to wrongful convictions such as, eyewitness misidentification testimony, unvalidated or improper forensic science, false confessions and incriminating statements, DNA lab errors, false confessions, and informants (2014). Bringing awareness to all these systematic defects, which result in wrongful, is important because it will better adjust the system to avoid making the same mistakes with future cases. However, false confession is not a systematic defect. It does not occur because files were misplaced or a lab technician put one too many drops. False confessions occur because of some of psychological attempt to protect oneself and their family. Thus, the courts responsibility should be to reduce these false confessions.

Determining a false confession proves difficult due to the multitude of dimensions involved. According to Kassin and Wrightsman’s (1985) survey of the literature, there are three main types of false confessions—voluntary, coerced-compliant, and coerced-internalized. Unlike coerced false confessions, voluntary false confessions arise as a result of someone willingly turning themselves into the police with an account of their crime (McCann, 1998). Voluntary false confessions can result from multiple motives, including an internalized need for punishment or to save someone else’s face. In contrast, coerced false confessions directly result from police interrogations. While coerced-compliant confessions are made to avoid interrogation, escape the stressful situation, or achieve some other reward, coerced-internalized confessions emerge when a suspects begins to

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:

In 1962, Criminal Interrogation and Confessions was written by John E. Reid and Fred Inbau. According to Robert Kolker he wrote, the book breaks down the

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.

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

3. Compare the outcome of practice the Reid Technique while interviewing a youth suspect with evidence and youth suspect without evidence.

When it comes to interviews many jurisdictions have established multidisciplinary child advocacy centers, which are intended to decrease the number of interviews, provide an environment that is child-friendly, and obtain valid information from children by using appropriate interviewing techniques that address the cognitive and psychosocial limitations of young witnesses. Evaluations have shown that this approach works well given the increased amount of accurate and complete children reports. Interrogations, on the other hand are based off of the interrogation training offered by John E. Reid & Associates, Inc, the provocative process of interrogation is preceded by a neutral information-gathering investigation to determine whether the suspect is innocent or guilty and these tactics taught are all legal for use with adults and youths. Researchers have noted that there is no special instructions given for interrogating youths but rather, the method advocated is to follow that for interrogating adults. Similarly the Reid training manual states that when interrogating a juvenile, “the same general rules prevail as for adults”, and law enforcement officers report that they use the same Reid techniques as often with children and adolescents as they do with

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