The Pros And Cons Of False Confessions

False confessions are receiving more public attention now that people are speaking out about having to serve jail time for a crime they did not commit. 2015 was a year to remember for false confessions starting in January when a man was released after serving 21 years in prison. The protocols that interrogators are trained to follow are dangerous because they allow investigators to have complete influence on innocent people to make false confessions.

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

Sometimes people create false confessions on their own without tampering from the police. “In the jogger case, four of the teens made incriminating admissions, but their descriptions of the attack were incomplete, inaccurate and, at times, contradictory. Investigators who reviewed the case were careful not to suggest wrongdoing or coercion on the part of the police”(Tyre). The police did their job, but “the teens were simply telling the police what the cops wanted to hear”(Tyre). In these situations, some people would prefer not spending hours and hours being interrogated and would rather just have the case settled, even if it not the truth. "A third of people who confess to crimes didn 't do it and incriminated themselves without physical coercion by police"(Slobodzian). This also means majority of those who produce false confessions did not think up the idea on their own. Police brutality during interrogation is still happening, though some are lucky not to experience

The conditions of an interrogation room, small and dark, make it easy for the interrogators to get in one’s head. The hostile conditions create a divide and discomfort between the suspect and the interrogator, already losing trust on both parties. “He eventually confessed, but investigators had to ‘spoonfeed’ him the details”(Patrick). The suspects feel uncomfortable and scared of the interrogators therefore, they feel the need to please the police, even if the idea did not come from them. In this case, the suspect Michael Crowe was under an immense amount of trauma, getting rushed in a cop car from the crime scene straight to the police station. After being interrogated for three and a half hours he was taken to a different location to get interviewed, “he was emotionally drained and so tired he could barely walk”(Warden 13). In the second interview one interrogator asked Crowe to write a letter to his dead sister he was accused of killing, “it is almost like I am being convinced of this[more] than really knowing it...I pray to God that you forgive me for what they say I did”(Warden 13). Crowe uses the phrase “what they say I did” proving that the confession was not his idea, but the police’s instead. He was innocent and the police forced him to make up a story and confess to a crime he did not commit, utilizing the mental strain of interrogation against