Criminal psychology

1. INTERVIEWING SUSPECTS &
WITNESSES
Desmond Ayim-Aboagye, Ph.D.
Criminal Psychology

2. Overview
• Confessions
• Societies expect that their police service will protect them from
• wrongdoers, especially dangerous criminals, and police forces
• strive hard to achieve this. One of the major ways in which they
• seek to do this is by apprehending the criminals and getting them
• to confess to their crimes. Unfortunately, this commendable striv-
• ing to get the guilty to confess also has a number of negative
• effects.

3. DRAWBACKS OF CONFESSIONS
• Two important drawbacks:
(i) innocent people do confess to crimes they have not
• committed (i.e. false confessions) and
(ii) guilty people might confess but, if the police do not also strive to
gather other evidence against them (e.g. in their interviews), when
some of these later retract their confession there is little else that co
urts can use against them.

4. The Innocence project
• Case files of these imprisoned people have
• been examined it has been found
• (i) that the most frequent type of
• evidence against them was eyewitness testimony (see chapter 6)
• and
• (ii) that in around twenty per cent of cases the person now
• shown to be innocent actually confessed to the police.

5. False Confessions?
• reason is
• that some (probably a minority) are voluntary
• 1) - innocent people confess, for example, to gain notoriety or to cover up for a friend.
• Another explanation, which involves more psychology, is that
• 2) Under pressure people will sometimes agree to things simply to
• relieve the pressure (e.g. torture, solitary confinement). Such con-
• fessions are called ‘coerced-compliant’, partly because the false
• confessors still know they did not do it.
• 3) Most worrying are ‘coerced-internalized’ false confessions in which the confessors
• themselves actually come to believe that they must have done it.
• For these, the psychological explanation is more complex and can
• involve special vulnerability on the part of the confessor (e.g. due
• to low intelligence, high anxiety, low maturity and/or a number of

6. False confessions
• psychological/mental disorders). However, such vulnerabilities
• are not enough to explain this phenomenon. Poor, or should we
• say old-fashioned, police interview methods have been shown,
• time and again, to have resulted in coerced false confessions.

7. Two main stages: Interview
Suspects
• The first stage (often called ‘the interview’) is designed to allow sus-
• pects to say whether they committed the crime or not. Some do
• admit to it. For those who do not, a decision is made during stage
• one as to whether they are lying when saying that they did not do
• it.
• Stage Two: Those deemed to be lying then enter stage two (often called ‘the
• interrogation’) which is designed to persuade/pressurize them to
• admit it. Police officers using this two-stage approach base much
• of their stage one decision as to whether the denying suspect is
• lying or not on an examination of the suspect’s behaviour. Most
• unfortunately, the cues they are trained to look for, while relating
• commonsense beliefs about lying (see the next chapter for more
• on this), are not valid.

8. Innocent Deniers
• Thus, they misclassify innocent deniers as
• liars and then put pressure on them to confess. This pressure is
• designed to gain confessions (for more on this see Kassin, 2005)
• and therefore, not surprisingly, many people confess, especially
• those who are vulnerable to pressure. However, those not so
• affected by psychological pressure (e.g. psychopaths, terrorists,
• spies, career criminals) may not confess. Some of these may no
t do so even in the face of ethically and morally questionable pro
cedures involving torture and threats to their families.

9. Tape Recorded Interviews
• It is difficult to determine how often ethically and morally
• questionable procedures are used on those suspected of wrong-
• doing. Some suspects later make claims about how they were
• interviewed/interrogated, but the ‘authorities’ may deny such
• claims. However, if the interviews are tape-recorded then it may
• be possible to obtain a better picture of what actually happened.

10. Characteristics of Interviews
• Barrie Irving was present at several dozen interviews
• in England. He noted that the interviewers used a number of persuasive/manipul
ative tactics, including:
•
• • pretending to be in possession of more evidence than they
•
• actually had
•
• • minimizing the seriousness of the offence
•
• • manipulating the interviewee’s self-esteem
•
• • pointing out the futility of denial.

11. Interviewing Witnesses
• Steps designed to improve the interviewing of witnesses, especially
• (i) those who may have been victims of serious crimes such as sexual
abuse and
• (ii) those who need most help to remember accurately (e.g. children an
d vulner-
• able adults). These steps, like the police interviewing of suspects
• described above, have often accompanied governmental decisions
• to tape record interviews with alleged victims or bystanders who
• witnessed what took place.

12. Police service:
skills to be the most Important in Interviews
• 1) listening,
• 2) preparation,
• 3) questioning,
• 4) flexibility,
• 5) open-mindedness and
• 6) compassion/empathy.

13. The good interviews (by objectivity and research)
• 1) use of open questions,
• 2) flexibility,
• 3) open-mindedness,
• 4) compassion/empathy,
• 5) keeping the interviewee to relevant topics,
• 6) preparing the interview,
• 7) appropriate use of pauses/silences,
• 8) apparent use of (appropriate) tactics,
• 9) appropriate use of closed questions and communication
• skills.

14. the not so good interviews
• 1) Pressure tactics,
• 2) Inappropriate interruptions,
• 3) Long/complex questions
• 4) Not releasing all of the information at the beginning
.

15. Interviewing witnesses
• Involve a series of sequential phases:
• • establish rapport,
•
• • obtain free recall,
•
• • ask appropriate questions,
•
• • achieve closure.

16. IMPORTANT
• A wealth of psychological research has demonstrated that to as
sist people to recall often complex and distressing events, they
must be in as positive a frame of mind as possible and have pos
itive regard for the interviewer. (This applies strongly to many as
pects of criminal psychology.)

17. IMPORTANT
• Another body of psychological research has demonstrated that
• when people are remembering events, what they say in their ow
n words (in psychology this is called ‘free recall’) is more accurat
e than what they say in response to questions. Thus, good inter-
• viewing first allows witnesses to provide free recall before askin
g them questions.

18. The Closing Phase
• The closing phase has two major parts.
• The first involves the interviewers checking that they have correctly
• understood the important parts, if any, of what the interviewees
• have communicated.
• The second involves ensuring that the interviewee leaves in as positive
a frame of mind as possible (by, for
• example, returning to some of the neutral topics covered in the
• rapport phase).

19. Questioning in court
• An important place where the questionin
g of (alleged) witnesses,
• victims and suspects also takes place is
in criminal courts.

20. Child witnesses
• New Zealand: the transcripts of twenty child sexual abuse trials in which children
aged
• five to twelve gave evidence (for the prosecution) revealed that the
• cross-examinations (by the defence lawyers) contained more lead-
• ing (i.e. suggestive) questions (thirty- five per cent) than did prose-
• cutors’ examinations-in-chief (fifteen per cent). Furthermore, (i)
• children’s misunderstanding of questions were evident in sixty- five
• per cent of the cross-examinations, (ii) there was a relationship
• between the number of child witness misunderstandings and the
• defence lawyers’ use of complex questions, and (iii) when children
• appeared to contradict what they had earlier said in the trials this
• was very often associated with an age-inappropriate question
• being asked (which caused the contradiction).

21. Adult Witnesses
• One looked at the transcripts of rape trials and found that the cross-exa
minations
• involved many more ‘yes’/‘no’ questions (which can be suggestive
• and do constrain the nature of the reply) than the examinations-
• in-chief (eighty-two per cent vs. forty-seven per cent) but fewer
• ‘open’ questions (which allow the witness to give an account not
• suggested by the question - six per cent versus twenty-three per
• cent).

22. Adult Witnesses
• Another study found similar data for ‘ordinary’ (alleged)
• adult rape victims but it also looked at transcripts of trials in
• which the alleged victims were adults with learning disability
• (who can have particular difficulty in understanding questions
• and in resisting suggestive questions).
• In these latter trials,
• A) more ‘yes’/no’ questions in the cross-examinations,
• B) more leading questions than in evidence-in-chief (twenty-five per cent vs. thre
e per cent).
• C) both the defence and prosecution lawyers questioned the wit-
• nesses with learning disability in ways similar to ordinary adult
• rape victims, thus demonstrating no special skills for these particu-
• larly vulnerable witnesses

23. Vulnerable Witnesses
• Recently some countries have taken the trouble:
(i) to encourage particularly vulnerable adults to disclose that they may
• have been abused,
(ii) to train investigative interviewers to interview such people and
(iii) to bring in legislation that provides procedures (sometimes referred to as ‘special
measures’) to assist such
• people to present their evidence to the court (e.g. by the use of
• video-recorded evidence, live television links from a room to the
• court room, the use of screens between the witness and the
• accused).

24. Recommended Reading
• Ainsworth, P. B. (2000) Psychology and crime: Myths and reality.
• Harlow, Essex: Longman.
•
• Alison, L. (2005) The Forensic Psychologist’s casebook: psychological
• profiling and criminal investigation. Cullompton, UK:
• Willan.
•
• Carson, D. and Bull, R. (2003) Handbook of psychology in legal
• contexts, 2nd edn. Chichester: Wiley.