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Chelsea Pannell

Professor Flores

ENG.1201.R05

5 December 2020

Police Interrogations the Problems

Serious crimes are committed every single day, left to clean up and figure out the mess

are police officers. At times police officer’s interrogation tactics can get out of hand, however

many officers will claim that these tactics are often necessary. These tactics don’t seem to look

out much for the right of the suspect and they are not adjusted for vulnerable individuals.

However, more than half the time confessional evidence in a trail will result in a conviction.

Many officers in the United States utilize similar tactics when conducting their interrogations.

Are these tactics problematic and what can be done to improve the reliability of interrogations?

A common technique utilized by police in the United States is that of the Reid Method.

This method is not always used, it is typically dependent upon if the investigator has been trained

in the method. The founder of these tactics was a former police officer who learned how to

utilize a polygraph machine. “An imposing, well-dressed man, he combined his polygraph skills

with his understanding of folk psychology to develop a method of extracting confessions”

(Kosinski). These techniques were said to be based in science; however they’re more so based

upon the experience of the investigator. The investigator will ask a series of nonconfrontational

questions within an interview like setting. “The investigator then proceeds to ask some

“behavior-provoking” questions which are designed to elicit different verbal and nonverbal

responses from truthful and deceptive suspects” (Kosinski). If the answers are not what the
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investigator is looking for, they may become suspicious. The creators of the method state that

people are not interrogated if they are not presumed to be guilty.

Investigators will also utilize tactics that can seemingly minimize the crimes committed.

Often police will play “devils advocate” in order to obtain a confession. “is designed to offer a

'crutch' for the suspect as he moves toward a confession” (Gallini). Officers will downplay the

seriousness of the crimes committed by blaming society or the victim.

Police officers will also utilize maximization techniques, meaning officers will attempt to

deceive the suspect into thinking that they have much more evidence against them than the

officers actually do. “confrontation, in which the suspect is presumed guilty and told (sometimes

falsely) about the evidence against him/her, is warned of the consequences associated with

his/her guilt and is prevented from denying his/her involvement in the crime” (Redlich). This

tactic can push anyone toward a confession if they believe there is enough evidence against

them.

Another common misconception that persists about interrogations is that investigator bias

does not actually happen. If an officer is trained in the Reid Method, any person brought into an

interrogation is presumed guilty already, by that point it’s just a means of extracting the

confession. “Diagnostic methods especially prone to problems of interpreter bias” (Gallini). The

methods that are utilized within the interrogation typically have issues with confirmation bias.

The interview before the onset of the interrogation is supposedly to help the investigator discern

if they believe the subject is deceitful. More often than not, if a suspect is brought into an

interrogation, they are already believed to be guilty.

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At times other issues can arise due to the interrogation tactics, such as false confessions

based around false memories. When an individual is under enough stress in a situation, whilst

being told things that they supposedly did can have the potential to create a false memory. “In

coerced-internalized confessions, the pressure is applied by police and internalized to the extent

that individuals change their beliefs about their innocence” (O’Donnell). When an individual

change’s their mind on their own innocence their mind can create scenarios based on the

information provided by the police. If false memories are created a false confession often

follows.

Confessional evidence holds up extremely well in court. “Confessions, whether true or

false, provide powerful evidence. Confession evidence can taint perceptions of other evidence in

an investigation or trial, including the testimony of other witnesses or experts, such as fingerprint

experts” (Chapman). During a trial, jurors are instructed to be sensitive toward confessional

evidence, but many are not explicitly instructed to be skeptical of this evidence. This type of

evidence can cast a large shadow over concrete evidence, even changing the minds of some

jurors.

To conclude, the common practices of officers within a police interrogation need to

change fundamentally. The tactics officers utilize do not respect the rights of the suspect, as the

interaction can leave a suspect in a vulnerable state of mind. Officers need not to deny a suspect

access to basic needs. Today’s common interrogation methods do not take much into account

when it comes do vulnerable or compromised individuals. Confessional evidence is seen as

strong evidence unless the suspect is impaired. However, tactics of officers need to be examined

throughout the process to deem if it is admissible. Additionally, the term impaired should be
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replaced with vulnerable, to broaden its meaning and criteria. The common tactics used by police

officers within the United States today and problematic and can produce unreliable results.
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Works Cited

Chapman, Frances E. “Coerced Internalized False Confessions and Police Interrogations: The

Power of Coercion.” Law & Psychology Review, vol. 37, p. 159–192, Mar.

2013. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

direct=true&db=i3h&AN=89007445&site=eds-live.

Gallini, Brian. “Police "Science" in the Interrogation Room: Seventy Years of Psuedo-

Psychological Interrogation Methods to Obtain Inadmissible Confessions.” Hastings Law

Journal. Vol 61, issue 3, art. 1. https://repository.uchastings.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?

article=3769&context=hastings_law_journal.

Kozinski, Wyatt. “The Reid Inter rogation Technique and False Confessions: A Time for

Change.” Seattle Journal for Social Justice. Vol. 16, issue 2, p. 301-345, April 2018.

https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1905&context=sjsj

O’Donnell, Christina M., Safer, Martian A. “Juror instructions and mock-juror sensitivity to

confession evidence in a simulated criminal case.” Psychology, Crime & Law. Vol. 23, p.

946-966, Nov. 2017.

Redlich, Allison., Meissner, Christian. "Techniques and Controversies in the Interrogation of

Suspects: The Artful Practice versus the Scientific Study."

https://scholarworks.utep.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?

article=1036&context=christian_meissner