Making a Case: INTERVIEWING SUSPECTS

Detecting lies
Police officers obviously need to be good at detecting lies if they are to determine the quality of information they're obtaining from suspect interviews. Studies have shown that police officers believe they're above average at detecting lies, but there's not substantial evidence that this is true. 

Mann et al. conducted a study into police officers' ability to detect truth and lies. They used a sample of 99 Kent police officers. The procedure for the study consisted of the participants being shown 54 clips of genuine suspect interviews, and were asked to record whether they thought the information was true or false from each clip, as well as the cues they used to help them reach that decision. The results showed that they did above chance level, at 66% accurate for lies and 63% accurate for truth. However, as there was no control group, it is not known if this were better than the general public.

Interrogative techniques
The purpose of an interrogation is to extract a confession from a suspect. Gudjonsson et al. believed that the most effective interrogative techniques were outlined in the Nine Reid Steps of Interrogation, put forward by Inbau et al. (N.B. that there are formal titles to each step, but I haven't included many of them here. I think it's more important that you understand and can explain each step and give a few examples than regurgitate the formal titles.)

Inbau et al.
The interrogation begins with direct positive confrontation - the suspect is told they have committed the offence. A theme is developed, where the detective proposes what happened at the crime scene and the suspect's involvement in it. If denials are offered, they are to be interrupted by the detective or ignored. They are then to be informed than objections will get them nowhere. The suspect's attention is to be maintained by the detective, by maintaining close physical proximity and eye contact. Passive moods are to be handled by emphasising the impact on the victim (or their family if appropriate), and encouraging guilt and remorse. The detective is then to offer two alternative accounts of what happened. One reduces the responsibility on the suspect, perhaps blaming the situation or pressure from others, whilst the other is much less favourable, in the hope that the suspect then admits to the preferable account. The suspect will give an oral confession, and then a written confession. 

False confessions
As you probably already know, interrogations aren't pleasant. They're highly pressured and distressing, and the detectives want to extract a confession from the suspect. This can often lead to people giving false confessions. There are three types of false confession. 

1. Voluntary confessions: believing that you have committed the crime without interrogation (often associated with mental disorders such as schizophrenia)
2. Coerced-internalised: the suspect is convinced by the detectives that they have committed the crime (often due to leading questions, poor memory/recall or abuse of alcohol/drugs)
3. Coerced-compliant: the suspect doesn't believe that they've committed the crime, but confess to it anyway to remove themselves from the interrogation (usually due to the stress of being interrogated)

Gudjonsson also suggested that four main factors affect the quality of confessions: the defendant (e.g. their IQ and age), quality of arrest and custody (e.g. at night suspects may be disorientated or tired), mental and physical state (e.g. psychological disorders distort memory and other cognitive functions), and interrogative factors (e.g. use of biased/leading questions). 

Gudjonsson conducted a case study of a young male (FC) aged 17 who gave a false confession. He was arrested due to inconsistencies in expenditure, but there was no forensic evidence against him. The crime in question was the abuse and murder of, and theft from, two elderly women. FC was interrogated for 14 hours, where he was consistently accused of the crimes, and was subject to verbal abuse in the form of being called impotent and incompetent in relationships. He confessed, but withdrew his confession only to confess again. He was imprisoned for one year, until the real offender came forward. During his time in prison, he was found to have an average IQ (94), no history of mental illness and a score of 10 on the suggestibility scale. It was concluded that he gave a coerced-compliant false confession.