Describe police interview techniques

Listening - interviewee invited to give an account of events, minimal questions from police. Questions and answers - interviewer asks specific questions based on the person's recall account. This is to reduce ambiguities, fill gaps and obtain additional information. Advice - statement is read through, alterations made if needed and interviewee informed of any further action. Gudjonsson said interviewee may deliberately try to deceive the interviewer. This comes in two types - self deception, where the interviewee lies to themselves, and others' deception, where the interviewee lies in order to conceal or falsify information. (Eckman, 1985)

Facilitators - make effective communication more likely The interviewer communicates expectations clearly Appealing to the interviewee's sense of altruism (unselfishness) The interviewer offers sympathetic understanding Catharsis - the interviewee feels relieved by talking about unpleasant experiences Extrinsic rewards - the interviewee is offered additional inducement to co-operate b). Evaluate police interview techniques using psychological principles. (16 marks) One of the main issues with interviews, and especially with coercive interview techniques, is that false confessions can be obtained, and this is highly unethical.
However, Gudjonsson said that the police rarely admit that false confessions happen, and so this could lead to the police relying too heavily on a confession as a definite admission of guilt. According to Gudjonsson, there are 3 types of false confession. Voluntary, where a person admits to an offence which they have not committed because they believe they have done it. This is most likely to occur with a mentally ill suspect. Coerced-internalised - the person is convinced by the police that they did commit the crime, even though they did not. This may happen if a person has amnesia, perhaps caused by alcohol or an injury.
This would cause them to distrust their own memory and so they would rely on what they were told to build up their memories of an event. Coerced-compliant - where a person admits to committing a crime even though they know they did not. This is most likely to happen in an interrogation, because the person feels pressured and they see a confession as their only way out of the situation. Police interviewing techniques which use deception, manipulation, pressure and persuasion are unethical for many reasons, one of which is that the police should be impartial upholders of the law who are above criticism.
Techniques such as these open the police to criticism and can only damage their reputation and the trust the general public have in the police, so public relations are hindered. The pressure on the police to maintain conviction statistics raises another ethical issue - it is obviously unethical to push someone for a confession even if it is suspected that they did not commit the offence, just so a conviction can be obtained. It is also unethical to put that amount of pressure on the police just to raise statistics.
The main ethical issue is that innocent people are being sent to prison on the basis of a false confession, and the occurrence of this is recognised by neither police nor judges (Gudjonsson, 1992). The fact that innocent people are being sent to prison, some for considerable amounts of time, while the real offender is still 'at large' affects not only the victims, but their families too, and as the majority of people are law abiding, they would find it unacceptable that innocent people are imprisoned and guilty people are still free just so police can raise their conviction statistics.
This could also lead to the public distrusting the police. A recent report on the handling of the Damilola Taylor case illustrates the issue surrounding evidence obtained during interviews. A quote from the report said, "Dealing with the circumstances of the vulnerable child witness Bromley and her evidence presented significant challenges to the investigation. In hindsight, Bromley should have been interviewed in better ways. The absence of any process to test the validity of Bromley's testimony before trial left the prosecution of the case vulnerable to problems.
The apparent differences between the way courts treat vulnerable young persons who are witnesses rather than victims or defendants requires further attention. " This suggests that interviewing techniques can still be improved. According to some, the police and criminal act (PACE) has not sufficiently improved police interview tactics. What further steps would you advise that should be taken to limit unethical and coercive interviewing techniques?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Civil Law describes