One stop interrogation & interviewing resource

[ganulv]

Yeah, the part concerning Mr. Parker was… sad is not even close to the appropriate word.

I was trained in the PEACE model many years ago, as were and until a few years ago all operational police officers in my department. It is awhile since I used it in suspect interviews.

The PEACE model IMHO works best with witnesses. It is not really suitable for suspects, even more so when they have a legal adviser present.

Has there been a replacement with any particular standardized training regime and/or technique in general, and for suspects in particular?

A bit of a tangent, but some of the language in the interview (there was mention of the PEACE technique being used extensively in England and Wales) lead me to understand that policing policies are at least partly decided at the country level and not necessarily at the level of the UK as a whole. Is that indeed the case?

[jmm99]

this:

... confession typically trumps physical evidence ....

Drizin & Leo, The Problem of False Confessions in the Post-DNA World (2004)(114 pp., examining 125 proven false confession cases):

This Article proceeds as follows:

Part I discusses, from a historical perspective, the study of wrongful convictions and the prominent role that false confessions have played in such studies. Part I also discusses the development of DNA testing and its role in renewing interest in the study of wrongful convictions.

Part II highlights the connection between police interrogation methods and false confessions, focusing principally on the social psychology of false confessions and research on the causes and consequences of false confessions.

Part III discusses the methodology used to compile and analyze the false confessions that make up this Article’s cohort, defines critical terms, and discusses the limitations of the data.

Part IV sets forth the quantitative findings gleaned from the cohort.

Part V takes a more qualitative approach to the data set, highlighting some of the common themes and trends that emerge from the cohort cases and describing illustrative cases in some detail.

Finally, Part VI concludes this Article with several policy recommendations suggested by the aforementioned findings, and highlights some recent positive developments which suggest that reforms designed to reduce the frequency of false confessions may stand a better chance of being implemented now than ever before.

Which is why no good lawyer will allow a client to be interviewed directly by police, whether that client is an accused, a focus person, a person of interest or a "mere" witness. Recall that Martha Stewart started off a potential witness in an investigation focused on someone else.

Regards

Mike

[slapout9]

Yeah, the part concerning Mr. Parker was… sad is not even close to the appropriate word.



Has there been a replacement with any particular standardized training regime and/or technique in general, and for suspects in particular?

A bit of a tangent, but some of the language in the interview (there was mention of the PEACE technique being used extensively in England and Wales) lead me to understand that policing policies are at least partly decided at the country level and not necessarily at the level of the UK as a whole. Is that indeed the case?

Yes, this technique is replacing the REID technique.
http://www.w-z.com/

[davidbfpo]

In part:

A bit of a tangent, but some of the language in the interview (there was mention of the PEACE technique being used extensively in England and Wales) lead me to understand that policing policies are at least partly decided at the country level and not necessarily at the level of the UK as a whole. Is that indeed the case?

I don't know if the PEACE model is used in Northern Ireland and Scotland, both have different legal systems.

The model was used in my former department, I expect it is wider use in England & Wales, although it will not be a national policing decision, more acceptance of its value by each department (43 in Eng & Wales).

Your first question was:

Has there been a replacement with any particular standardized training regime and/or technique in general, and for suspects in particular?

There are specialist courses for interviewing, mainly for 'serious crime'. That was not my forte, so I cannot add more.

[Firn]

Thanks for ganulv and jmm99 for providing those links. Podcasts have the advantage that one can absorb the content whiled doing a workout, detailed papers enable one to dig deeper*.

... confession typically trumps physical evidence

This runs through both sources. There are certainly a couple of reasons for it, some already mentioned.

1) The wide-spread disbelief among agents (police, prosecutors, judges, jurors) that false confessions exist or do so at a considerable level is a big one. The amount of proven innocent in that sample that were actually convicted in a trial is amazingly high, which seems to indicate that jurors tend to grossly overweight confessions compared to physical evidence.

2) If a confession is obtained relatively early it seems that the effort to collect & evaluate solid physical evidence is greatly reduced. Limited ressources tend to get shifted to other cases. A plausible story gets constructed and conflicting evidence, if collected gets pushed away. The unique quality of DNA tests enables it collapse a plausible story built around a false confession.

3) The PEACE method seems to force the investigator to underweight the power of confessions. An interesting question to more knowledgable guys out there: Does the greater qualitiy and quantity of physical evidence (forensic science, information technology like cellphone location etc, etc...) make the PEACE approach more attractive and efficient relative to REID? If so in which cases?

*Many things in the paper were quite disgusting, sadly a considerable amount concerned processes of the justice system.

[jmm99]

REID tends to rely a bit too much on "folk psychology"; PEACE may rely a bit too much on CSI - which is not always available.

What one calls it is not so important as one being fully committed to the idea that proper planning and preparation prevent pi$$ poor performance.

I don't know what Det. Flores would call his methodology followed in the Jody Arias interrogation. He certainly followed the 7 P's rule (adding patience and persistence).

Jodi Arias Interrogation Tape. Part 1

Jodi Arias Interrogation Tape. Part 2

Jodi Arias Interrogation Tape. Part 3

Jodi Arias Interrogation Tape. Part 4

(Youtube; each over 2 hrs - just short of 9 hrs total; and, yes, I recently watched it all, looking for holes in Flores' methodology).

Note that, after all that, Det. Flores did not get a "full confession". Here's what he did do:

1. He obtained numerous material admissions against interest.

2. He demolished her various fabrications of fact by using forensic evidence.

And, Flores came across to me as a soft-spoken, nice guy. In short, he employed devastating police techniques without walking on the edge of the cliff or inducing a false confession.

A good, shorter article (with more recent references into 2012) is KTC, “Only the Guilty Would Confess to Crimes”
: Understanding the Mystery of False Confessions (Nov 2012), with researcher/expert responses at the end of the article from Saul Kassin, Walter Katz, Karen Franklin, and Larry Barksdale.

Here are some snips from a mock jury panel:

“In any kind of interrogation, anybody with any common sense wouldn’t agree to confessing to a murder. I mean that is…that is absurd."—Mock juror

“Your parents do that to you growing up. I mean your brother is not going to tell on himself. I have never once said, ‘All right, I did it’, when I didn’t do it. Not once. I don’t care how much she told me that he has done told on me, I am in trouble, it would be easier if I would go ahead and admit it.”—Mock juror

“They never even gave him a psych evaluation. Like they just kept battering him in the interrogation room and just on and on and on. I mean anybody is going to be mentally broke down or emotionally broken down after so long.”—Mock juror

“The police probably put him between a rock and a hard place, like, ‘You are going to be convicted anyways. If you go to trial, even though you didn’t do it, you will be convicted. If you are convicted, you will get twenty years. If you tell us you did it, then we can get you eight years.’ So it is more like, ‘Well, I would rather leave for eight years than twenty’.”—Mock juror

“To actually admit to a murder, something had to occur during that interview for him to start following what they wanted him to say. I mean you know if you killed somebody or not, you don’t miss that. You know without a doubt. So what happened during those hours that made him finally say, ‘Okay, yes, I will say I did it’?”—Mock juror

“But the whole confession part just angers me, because obviously if he wouldn’t have confessed and had stood his ground, we probably wouldn’t be here. So I don’t think he was coerced in any, I mean obviously pressured, but forced to say he did it? No.”—Mock juror

“The police say, “We did nothing wrong.” A confession kind of steered them in a different direction, but obviously, there couldn’t have been any physical evidence to tie him to it. So I guess you would have to say, the prosecutors did a very good job and the defense attorneys did a poor job.”—Mock juror

“I think the other thing he has to be careful about too is there are so many precedents and if you start doing this, like you said, because you don’t want to give him too little, because then everybody is going to say, ‘Well, I will just wrongfully say I did this and then five or ten years down the road, I can get $20 million or $5 million’.” – Mock juror

Obviously, some differences of opinion exist.

Another very material point that has to be confronted is whether false confessions are a mountain or a molehill. Consider the millions of criminal cases brought in the US since 1971 (the starting year for the 2004 Drizin & Leo study), as compared to the proven false confession cases (in the hundreds). Of course, if one operates under the rule that it is better for 100 (or more) guilty to go free lest 1 innocent be convicted, then one possibly looks at it as a mountain-sized problem. I see it as a molehill-sized problem.

Finally, the reliability of such studies as Drizin & Leo's, as applied to any individual case without the expert relating those general studies to the facts of the particular case, can reasonably be questioned. E.g., in our own, Michigan v. Jerome Walter Kowalski (2012), Michigan Supreme Court, No. 141932, excluding Dr. Leo's generalized testimony, but allowing more particular testimony by another expert:

We hold that the circuit court did not abuse its discretion by excluding the expert testimony regarding the published literature on false confessions and police interrogations on the basis of its determination that the testimony was not reliable, even though the subject of the proposed testimony is beyond the common knowledge of the average juror.

We also hold, however, that the circuit court abused its discretion by excluding the proffered testimony regarding defendant’s psychological characteristics because it failed to consider this evidence separately from the properly excluded general expert testimony and therefore failed to properly apply both MRE 702 and MRE 403 to that evidence.

For example, even if the expert proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the 'gator followed Imbau-Reid to the letter, that doesn't prove that the particular confession (or admission) was false or coerced. Taking the Arias interrogation as an example, the expert would have to identify certain techniques by Flores which caused Arias to say certain things which she otherwise wouldn't have said - and for the defense attorney to introduce other evidence that what she said then was untrue.

In short, the defense attorney is faced with the difficult task of convincing the jury that she lied then (albeit because of the devil cop), but she is telling the truth now.

Regards

Mike

PS: Giving the last word to John E. Reid & Associates, Inc (its legal note on the Kowalski case):

Recognized As The World Leader In Interview And Interrogation Training. If it doesn't say "The Reid Technique" it's not John E. Reid & Associates, Inc. Celebrating 65 Years of Excellence in Service.

since neither Slap nor I said much about REID in this thread.

[davidbfpo]

Firn in part asked:

The PEACE method seems to force the investigator to underweigh the power of confessions. An interesting question to more knowledgable guys out there: Does the greater quality and quantity of physical evidence (forensic science, information technology like cellphone location etc, etc...) make the PEACE approach more attractive and efficient relative to REID? If so in which cases?

It might help if you peruse this rather clear explanation of the policy and procedure:http://www.sussex.police.uk/policing...viewing-policy

The whole premise of the PEACE method for interviewing suspects is that they will give an account and if they do the account can be tested by referring to the evidence gathered.

[slapout9]

those interested should look to this SWC thread, One stop interrogation resource.

Regards

Mike

Yes, I thought we had covered this ground before. Also a general comment based on my experience. Any technique REID,W/Z,etc. is usually used as a structured way to teach new investigators how to do it, it is a track to run on for learning purposes. After that if the investigator is any good he will begin to alter and adjust the technique based upon his experience, evidence or lack of and his/her success with it's usage. No method is 100% effective or accurate all the time because you are dealing with Human Beings and they can be a bit tricky at times.

[Firn]

Thanks for the replies guys, jmm99 could you perhaps check your forum link? It didn't work for me and I couldn't find something similar in the title in the search function. Maybe thats just me. I will read the material about PEACE later.

In any case I wrote that I thought that the increasing quality and quantity of physical evidence should enable the judicial system to rely less on the power of confessions. The paper starts with a look back to a time when torture was in some cases the norm to solve crimes for which sometimes obviously no physical evidence existed. Especially in those infamous witch trials when somebody accused a 'witch' to have curse a cow. The confession dominanted everything and to get it many cruel methods were employed.

To get to the present day I listened roughly 35 minutes from part 4 and 10 min of part 1, it is certainly surprising to find something like that on youtube. I first had to google the case to get an idea of the evidence which was extracted. The interviewer informs the suspect that they got a great deal of detailed evidence and does conduct a pretty open, yet patient and persistent interview. As jmm99 put it:

1. He obtained numerous material admissions against interest.

2. He demolished her various fabrications of fact by using forensic evidence.

Now my point was that the advances in forensic science & others enabled the interviewer to do the 7p and perform step 1 and 2 with such force. It should be quite a bit easier to handle such interviews well when you get dealt such good cards. Still from my non-existent experience he did a fine job.

BTW: It is quite amazing how the suspect changes stories even in those 35 minutes at the start of part 4, even if we consider how difficult it must be to explain those crushing facts away. I was first surprised that wiki has nothing on cell phone data but her phone was according to her 'discharged' and the rest of the facts solved the time & location issue very precisely. I guess I will switch back to nature and science podcasts for my Tabatas.

[davidbfpo]

There is a new thread 'Douglas Starr on Reid and PEACE techniques', which started in December 2013, although it's focus is LE interview techniques, it sits better merged here. So in a moment this post will be preceded by a number of posts. I have also moved this thread to the LE forum, from RFI.

[Firn]

To be honest I was never much interested into the show the press made of the tragic murder of Meredith Kercher. It even escaped me that a third person has been convicted her murder and only knew the name of the 'sexy' American suspect.

This post is certainly not about guilt or innocence, however it is interesting to notice that quite objectively many factors of this case and its interrogations share traits with mentioned study cases in which false confessions were obtained. Her youth, the lack of a lawyer, the repeated questioning, the status as 'witness', the (quick) denial of the confession and the position as foreigner with a lack of support and language skills are all tendencies pointing in the same direction. Even if we discount the use of mild physical violence, which is not unheard of in Italy, and the likely use of lies a false confessions seems to be a strong possibility. There is of course only quite flimsy physical evidence supporting the prosecution and the words of man which with practically no doubt committed the murder and which sentence got almost halved after the first conviction of the pair as murderers.

Like in many questionable American case the interrogations were not captured by video or recorder and the forensics were handled quite shoddily.

I might add that in Italy the public opinion has bee rather split, at least to the votes for comments on the website of the Corriere. Lots of emotions and plenty of people who think that the Italian justice system has made itself a fool in the eyes of the world. As I wrote before I have no idea what happened but it was worth to quickly look at the case with some science in mind.

[Jedburgh]

Intelligence Interviewing: From Science to Practice

The 2014 HIG Research Symposium will be held at the National Academies of Sciences Building located at 2101 Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C.

Please register for the conference by February 28, 2014

Our 2014 symposium will highlight new research findings aimed at supporting experts working in the Intelligence community, and will enable policy-makers and Intelligence professionals to network with our team of world-leading social scientists.

The symposium – which is being coordinated by the Center for Law & Human Behavior at the University of Texas at El Paso – will provide important opportunities to discuss the challenges currently faced by intelligence interviewers and the ways in which ground-breaking research can impact the effectiveness of interview and interrogation methods.

I'll be in attendance and in town for a couple of days - look forward to seeing anyone else who will be in the area.

[davidbfpo]

Moderator's Note

Five threads have been merged here, some are quite old. The title is unchanged. There are a number of threads on the related debate on the use of torture (un-merged as yet).

Prompted by reading an article that will become a new thread later today and one day likely to be merged here (Ends).

[davidbfpo]

Interrogation,, whether of suspects or witnesses, is a fascinating subject and this article is a good summary of where research is today:http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/20...interrogation/

Cut & paste didn't work, so have a peek!

I was somewhat puzzled that the Cognitive Method was only just being adopted by some LE agencies, it has been around here for at least thirty years.

There is a main thread for the subject.

[davidbfpo]

Within a legal setting this article are several passages and links on interrogation - notably HIG's work:

There is also a 46-page HIG booklet that offers an accessible view into the various controlled investigations completed, underway, and on the horizon. In general, the results (unsurprisingly) indicate that rapport-building approaches draw out more credible information than control-based (or coercive) methods.

Link to article:https://www.justsecurity.org/29273/a...-genuine-step/

Link to HIG booklet:http://online.fliphtml5.com/xaga/cwpt/#p=45

[SWJ Blog]

Brussels Attacks Were A Terrorist Interrogation Failure

Entry Excerpt:



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Read the full post and make any comments at the SWJ Blog.
This forum is a feed only and is closed to user comments.

[SWJ Blog]

Notes on Tactical Use of Qualitative Interviewing

Entry Excerpt:



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Read the full post and make any comments at the SWJ Blog.
This forum is a feed only and is closed to user comments.

[davidbfpo]

A new online magazine from CREST, a UK academic body on security, has several short articles on Information Elicitation. Including one on the Luftwaffe ace interrogator Hans Scharff (who appears on a few threads here).

Link:https://crestresearch.ac.uk/resource...ue-1-flipbook/

The Scharff article is by a Swedish PhD student, his thesis was 'Eliciting human intelligence: A conceptualization and empirical testing of the Scharff technique' and is available - free - on:https://gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/41567

[davidbfpo]

A 'Long Read' article in The Guardian, rated by Professor John Horgan as 'a must read' and sub-titled:

Expert interrogators know torture doesn’t work – but until now, nobody could prove it. By analysing hundreds of top-secret interviews with terror suspects, two British scientists have revolutionised the art of extracting the truth.

A succinct explanation:

The Alisons, husband and wife, have done something no scholars of interrogation have been able to do before. Working in close cooperation with the police, who allowed them access to more than 1,000 hours of tapes, they have observed and analysed hundreds of real-world interviews with terrorists suspected of serious crimes. No researcher in the world has ever laid hands on such a haul of data before. Based on this research, they have constructed the world’s first empirically grounded and comprehensive model of interrogation tactics.

Link:https://www.theguardian.com/news/201...their-secrets?

There are two related threads:One stop interrogation & interviewing resource (which is open, with 98 posts and 87k views) and an older, closed thread (with 162 posts and 168k views):The US & Interrogation (catch all)

Earlier this week 'The Guardian' has a longer, grim article 'Inside the CIA's black site torture site', which was in Afghanistan. It is based on:

274 documents the CIA and Pentagon were forced to declassify and release during pre-trial discovery. These documents, many of them scheduled to be entered as exhibits at trial, provide the fullest picture yet of what the three men suffered in that secret CIA dungeon – and of how fatefully their lives intersected with the rise and fall of James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, the men who designed the torture regime.

Link:https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-interrogation

[davidbfpo]

Via a pointer in an academic journal the link is to a 2hr 39m video recorded interview in 2010 conducted by the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) of a Canadian Air Force Colonel Russell Williams, a suspected serial killer and rapist. The video intro starts with:

Here is a masterful deconstruction: A confident and cocky military man strode into the interview room and a broken and degenerate killer and sexual sadist shuffled out, after being prompted to confess his shocking crimes, as I wrote about it when I covered the case in 2010.

Link to video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsLbDzkIy3A and background:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russel...ams_(criminal)