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.
The Reid Technique is an interrogation process that consists of two parts, the interview and a nine-step interrogation. The interview, which is non-accusatory in nature, gives the interviewer a chance to gather information related to the case. The interview also allows the interrogator to gather behavioral information by conducting what is known as a behavioral analysis interview (BAI) (Inbau, Reid, Buckley, & Jayne, 2013). The BAI consists of questions that were created to provoke verbal and non-verbal responses from suspects so that they can determine if the person is involved in the case or if they can be eliminated from suspicion (Associates J. E., 2004). This interview is used to assess an individual’s guilt so that the interviewer can decide if an interrogation is needed. Once an interview has been conducted and the investigator feels that further interrogation is needed, they start the nine-step process that they believe will get them a confession.
The first step of the interrogation begins with direct positive confrontation. This is where the interrogator confronts the suspects in a manner that creates an understanding that there is evidence against them. This evidence may or may not be true but the evidence is exaggerated so that it i...
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...igations today has a huge impact on false confessions. The Reid Technique is being criticized in the media because of its guilt-presumptive, aggressive, and psychologically manipulative nature. It is based on a series of assumptions that lack scientific support, and by using it they are creating hostile and coercive environment for the interrogation. The fact that they try to pass these confessions off as voluntary should also be an issue against using them since we know they are usually coerced. There are two alternatives to the Reid technique being used to interview suspects. These do not use coercion and manipulation to get confessions. The first is the PEACE Model, which is an interview technique that is more ethical, and the other technique is Cognitive interviewing which is used by police as a memory technique used to enhance the retrieval of their memory.
In “The Interview” by Douglas Starr, He talks about the different techniques they use when interrogating suspects to determine whether the suspect is lying. One technique they use is called the Reid Technique and that is when
In order to incriminate Danial Williams, Joseph Dick, Eric Wilson, and Derek Tice with the rape and murder of Michelle Moore-Bosko, Detectives Maureen Evans and Robert Ford conducted long, grueling interrogation sessions using many provocative and manipulative tactics. Throughout this process, Ford and Evans coerced the suspects into renegotiating their perception of the crime until an entirely new reality was created. This new reality evolved as the police elicited additional confessionary evidence to account for each new piece of physical evidence from the crime scene. Eventually, in an iterative process that had police editing their theories of the crime and then forcing the suspects to claim this new reality as their own, the reconciled reality of the crime became one that was consistent with both the criminal evidence and the suspects’ new perception. An analysis of empirical m...
The first appearance of the notion of silence or lack of silence occurs at the first presence of the criminal justice system: the initial meeting with a police officer. During the War on Drugs, it became common for police officers to stop and frisk people, including those without suspicious behavior, in search of drug violations. Although, not against the law, the majority of people do not know that they have the option of declining such a search and refuse to answer any questions. Professor Tracey Maclin conducted a study regarding this phenomenon concluding, “the overwhelming majority of people who are confronted by police and asked questions respond, and when asked to be searched, they comply. This is the case even among those… who have every reason to resist these tactics because they actually have something to hide” (Alexander 66). Therefore, the finding suggests that only a few people do not fear a supposed consequence of not abiding by a police officer’s request. Hence, people remain silent and do n...
The act of interrogation has been around for thousands of years. From the Punic Wars to the war in Iraq, interrogating criminals, prisoners or military officers in order to receive advantageous information has been regularly used. These interrogation techniques can range from physical pain to emotional distress. Hitting an individual with a whip while they hang from a ceiling or excessively questioning them may seem like an ideal way to get them to reveal something, but in reality it is ineffective and . This is because even the most enduring individual can be made to admit anything under excruciating circumstances. In the Fifth Amendment of the Bill of Rights there is a provision (“no person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself” ) which reflects a time-honored common principle that no person is bound to betray him or herself or can be forced to give incriminating evidence. This ideology of self-incrimination has been challenged heavily over the past s...
Guyll, M., Madon, S., Yang, Y., Lannin, D. G., Scherr, K., & Greathouse, S. (2013). Innocence and resisting confession during interrogation: Effects on physiologic activity. Law And Human Behavior, 37(5), 366-375. doi:10.1037/lhb0000044
Most people believe that all interrogators are trained to use mental and physical abusive tactics because it appears on the media and news so often, therefore making it believable to blame them for false confessions. “Interrogation is derived from the latin roots inter (in the presence of) and
Garrett, B. L. (n.d.). The Substance of False Confessions. Criminal Justice Collection. Retrieved November 23, 2010, from find.galegroup.com.uproxy.library.dc-uoit.ca/gtx/retrieve.do?contentSet=IAC-Documents&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&qrySerId=Locale%28en%2C%2C%29%3AFQE%3D%28su%2CNone%2C28%29%22Wrongful+Convictions+%28Law%29%22%3AAnd%3ALQE%3D%28RE%2CNone%2C3%29ref%24&sgHitCo
Skolnick, J. H., & Leo, R. A. (1992, January 1). The ethics of deceptive interrogation. Criminal Justice Ethics, 11(1). Retrieved from http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The ethics of deceptive interrogation.-a012396024
Ofshe, Richard J., and Richard A. Leo. The Social Psychology of Police Interrogation: The Theory and Classification of True and False Confessions (1997). Web. 28 Nov. 2011.
According to “Sleep Deprivation and False Confessions” and “False Confessions to Police and their Relationship with Conduct Disorder, ADHD, and life adversity,” it tackles on the causes of false confessions and who is more prone to such factors. Based on “The Role of Deception” and “How the Police Generate False Confessions: An Inside Look at the Interrogation Room” by Trainum, James L, it focuses on the methods police interrogators use to coerce a false confession. Lastly, ways to prevent false confessions from recurring will be recommended through “Miranda Rights Comprehension in Young Adults with Specific Language Impairment,” “Miranda Rights and Wrongs: Matter of Justice,” and “Police-Induced Confessions: Risk Factors and Recommendations.” Due to these reasons, the modern justice system needs to be updated and enforced to avoid similar cases of coerced false
...expert testimony in assessing the reliability of disputed confessions. The reason people make false confessions is typically due to a combination of factors such as psychological vulnerabilities, nature of the custodial confinement and the police interviewing tactics. Standardized psychological tests have been devised in order to assess personality factors such as suggestibility and compliance that render some people more vulnerable than others but these should never bee looked at in isolation. Studies indicate that reported cases are only the ‘tip of the iceberg’. It appears that young people are particularly vulnerable and often make false confessions in order to protect others. It is not only people with learning disability or major mental illness´ that are susceptible to make false confessions; depending on the context, anybody can.
From the moment an innocent individual enters the criminal justice system they are pressured by law enforcement whose main objective is to obtain a conviction. Some police interrogation tactics have been characterized as explicit violations of the suspect’s right to due process (Campbell and Denov 2004). However, this is just the beginning. Additional forms of suffering under police custody include assaults,
The Self-Administered Interview (SAI) is a revolutionary investigative tool developed by a small team consisting of 'Dr Fiona Gabbert (Abertay University, Scotland), Dr Lorraine Hope (Portsmouth University, England) and Professor Ron Fisher (Florida International University, USA)' (“The SAI”, n.d.). The SAI has been developed to preserve and protect the memories of eye witnesses to incidents or critical events. Eyewitness accounts are critical to police investigations and may play a key role in the conviction of a potential criminal. Inaccurate eyewitness accounts are said to be the cause of many false imprisonments, which is why it is so crucial that we protect the memory of a witness. If a case goes to trial “one can reasonably assume that
Leo, R and Ofshe R. The Social Psychology of Police Interrogation: The Theory and Classification of True and False Confessions. 16 Studies in Law, Politics and Society 189,
When officers are able to use false information against a suspect they are using coercion. Methods such as the Reid technique, are not helping to reach a true confession from the actual culprit but are instead putting innocent people through so much stress and tension that many start to convince themselves that they may have actually committed the crime they are accused of. These people are essentially confessing because they feel trapped and human nature tells us to try to find an escape. Current interrogation methods are hurting the innocent instead of helping