Analyses of real-life police interviews with suspects: Strategies used and suspect responses.

1. Analyses of real-life police interviews with suspects: Strategies used and suspect responses. Ray Bull and Samantha Leahy-Harland

2. 1. Reasons for coercion One of the major assumptions underlying justification for the use of coercive interrogation techniques is the pervasive belief (noted by Richard Leo) that “…suspects almost never confess spontaneously but virtually always in response to police pressure” (Leo, 2008, p. 162) and that “Confessions, especially to serious crimes, are rarely made spontaneously. Rather they are actively elicited…typically after sustained psychological pressure.” (Leo, 2008, p. 119).

3. 2. The ‘traditional way’ In many countries the traditional way that investigators have interrogated those whom they suspect of having been involved in wrong-doing has involved a pressurising or oppressive approach. For example, in India a fairly recent survey found that some police officers said that they do use a variety of intimidation techniques (Alison, Sarangi, & Wright, 2008); the ‘Reid approach’ which is widely used in the USA (and is exported to other countries) has been criticised for being sufficiently coercive to cause false confessions; in North America a 2005 analysis of eleven guidance books/manuals found that among the tactics most widely recommended were ‘minimisation’, ‘maximisation’, and the use/mention of false evidence.

4. 3. Suspects’ Interview Intentions Recently a limited amount of relevant research on a new topic has consistently found that a substantial proportion of guilty suspects had not, in fact, decided to deny/say nothing in their forthcoming police interviews (e.g. St-Yves and Des Lauriers-Varin, 2009). For example, in Australia Kebbell, Hurren, and Mazerolle (2006) found that only a half of the convicted sex offenders with whom they held a research interview said that they had entered the police interview having already decided whether to deny or admit to the crime(s) they had committed; less than 20% had planned to deny and around 30% had planned to admit/give a truthful account. The other 50% said they entered the police interview not yet having decided whether to deny or to admit/give a truthful account.

5. 4. Reactance Kebbell, Alison, and Hurren (2008) noted that some guilty suspects who (prior to and/or at the beginning of the interview) may be considering whether to admit/give a truthful account may subsequently decide not to simply because of the way they are being interviewed. This ‘psychological reactance’ has also been mentioned by Gudjonsson (2006) and by Holmberg and Christianson (2002) among others, but the frequency with which it occurs in the interviewing of suspects is deserving of much greater research attention.

6. 5. An association between interviewing style and denials? In Sweden, whether denial or admittance occurred was related by Holmberg and Christianson (2002) to police styles of suspect interviewing in cases of serious crime. They found a relationship between (later convicted) suspects’ recalled reactions about their interviews and their denial/admittance, in that those who said they had been frightened, stressed, insulted were less likely to have admitted. These researchers concluded that a“dominant interviewing style is associated with suspects denying crime” (p.42). In 2005 O’Connor and Carson (both highly experienced professional interviewers) found that the predominant reason those imprisoned for child molestation gave for why they gave truthful accounts was the respect shown to them by the interviewers.

7. 6. A ‘new’ approach In England and Wales in 1992 a new approach to the interviewing of suspects (and witnesses/victims) was developed and adopted nationally by the police service. This approach ‘downplays’ the importance of the seeking of a confession and instead heavily emphasises the importance of gathering information from interviewees This still-evolving approach (called ‘PEACE’ – see Milne & Bull 1999 for its details and extensive psychological ‘underpinnings’) has a strong emphasis on ethically encouraging suspects to talk, and only then questioning them (which includes pointing out contradictions/inconsistencies in what they say and with other information gathered prior to the interview). In the light of recent research findings (e.g. Dando & Bull, 2011 – also see work by Granhag and by Hartwig) this ‘challenging’ about contradictions (by using the gradual presentation of evidence/information) is now becoming a major emphasis in UK investigator/interviewer training, which is seeking to employ our GRIMACE approach.

8. Our ‘GRIMACE’ approach Our ‘GRIMACE’approach is for use in complex cases the interviewer in a planned way gradually lets the suspect know the relevant information the interviewer has available. It involves (i) Gathering Reliable Information/’evidence’ before interviewing, (ii) Motivating a ‘free recall’Account from the suspects, and then (iii) during the open-ended questioning phaseChallenging Effectively (i. e. gradually/incrementally) the suspect (using the information to point out contradictions etc.) about what the suspect has so far said. (One of the main reasons for our gradual revelation is that in complex cases the interviewer may well be aware of a considerable amount of possibly incriminating information and dealing with this one major ‘topic’ at a time is likely to reduce the cognitive load for the interviewer but incrementally increase for the guilty suspect the realisation that (i) their contradictions/lies are being revealed and (ii) the information/evidence incriminating them is strengthening.)

9. 7. Some very new findings The data/findings to be presented as part of this symposium are drawn from a recently analysed set of contemporaneously tape recorded police interviews with 56 suspects regarding very serious crimes (e.g. murder, rape). (We are now beginning to write up this work for publication.) The interviews involved fairly recent cases that were no longer ‘ongoing’. Many of these interviews (discounting breaks within them) lasted several hours (some on consecutive days). Each audio-recording tape has a maximum duration of 45 minutes and thus 407 such tapes were analysed. (Only a few suspects did not want to have a legal advisor present.) Among the main issues our analysis has so far examined are (i) the strategies used by interviewers and (ii) the responses made by the suspects.

10. 8. Number of times each interviewer strategy was used across all of the interviews with the 56 suspects Presentation of information/evidence 8,713 Challenges 2,280 Explicitly asks for account/tell truth 338 Rapport/empathy 273 Requests attention of suspect 151 Describes trauma of victim (or victim’s family) 126 Use of silence 94 Situational futility 62 Emphasises seriousness of offence 57 In the suspect’s interest to talk 49 Describes injuries of victim 42 Reiterates the caution 33 Gives the ‘Special warning’ (relating to silence) 21 Maximisation 01 Minimisation 00 (See me later if you need a description of any of these tactics.)

11. 9. Interviewer strategies Thus we found that the strategies most frequently used were ‘presentation of information’, ‘challenges’, ‘explicitly asking for an account/the truth’, and ‘rapport/empathy’. (All of which are emphasised in the UK ‘PEACE’ training.) ‘Minimisation’ and ‘maximisation’ (which the UK police are told not to use) never/almost never occurred (as also found in a different study – see Bull and Soukara, 2010).

12. 10. For the two most frequently used interviewer strategies, the mean frequencies of use across the nine five-minute time segments per tape were fairly constant. time ‘Presentation of information’‘Challenges’ 0 to 5 2.77 0.44 5 to 10 3.62 0.84 10 to 15 3.71 0.88 15 to 20 3.53 0.99 20 to 25 3.54 1.05 25 to 30 3.68 1.00 30 to 35 3.57 1.16 35 to 40 3.22 1.16 40 to 45 1.83 0.59

13. 11. Suspects’ Responses Of the responses made by suspects, ‘relevant responses’ were most frequent, with a mean frequency of 76 occurrences per tape. ‘No comment’ responses were the second most frequent response, occurring on average 21 times per tape. It was rare for the suspect to challenge the interviewer or for the suspect to answer in an unclear or irrelevant manner. Complete silence was also quite rare with a mean frequency of six occurrences per tape. When each 45 minute tape was broken down into five-minute time segments, the distribution of the above types of suspects’ responses did not differ by time segment.

14. 12. Regression analysis was employed to examine if any strategies were associated with suspects responding relevantly Strategy and β values R² = .31 (p < .001). [*p < .05 **p<.01 ***p<.001] Positive associations Rapport/empathy = .19*** Presentation of evidence = .15** Requests attention = .13** Negative associations Explicitly asks for account/tell truth = -.27*** Emphasises seriousness of offence = -.14** Caution reiterated = -.14** Special warning = -.13** Situational futility = -.10* No association Use of silence = .09 Suspect’s interest to talk = -.08 Describe injuries = .08 Challenge = .06 Describes trauma = -.01

15. 13. Interview outcomes It was noted whether the 56 suspects admitted or denied these very serious offences. Most actively denied (64%). (Active denials included those interviews where the suspect stayed silent or made/said “no comment”, but made denials via a prepared statement in interview - which either they or their legal advisor read out.) A further 13% neither admitted nor actively denied, (i.e. they merely said “no comment” or remained silent). Relatively few suspects fully (7%; n = 4) or partially admitted (16%), typically fairly early on in their interviews. Given the few full admissions, no worthwhile analyses are possible in terms of which strategies may have been related to these (but see the special sample of ‘shift from denial to admission’ interviews in Bull and Soukara, 2010). However, for the 56 suspects, the eventual case outcome was known to us for 49 of them, all of whom were convicted.

16. 14. End Despite the fact that most of these suspects seemed from the outset to be clear about their position (a) to deny or admit and (b) to either talk or not talk (the latter perhaps due to preceding legal advice), this did not deter the interviewers from continuing in these interviews to employ a range of strategies recommended in their (PEACE) training designed to encourage suspects to provide an account, which most suspects actually did. The PEACE training focuses on the gaining of information not confessions. The majority of suspects in this sample regarding serious offences were co-operative and provided relevant responses to questioning. Interviewers were more challenging to suspects in the present study than has been observed in our earlier studies (which have included suspects mostly in less serious cases and interviews recorded in earlier years than was the case for the present sample).

17. References Alison, L., Sarangi, S., & Wright, A. (2008). Human rights is not enough: the need for demonstrating efficacy of an ethical approach to interviewing in India. Legal & Criminological Psychology, 13, 89-106. Bull, R., & Soukara, S. (2010). A set of studies of what really happens in police interviews with suspects. In G. D. Lassiter and C. Meissner (Eds.) Interrogations and confessions. Washington: American Psychological Association. Dando, C., & BULL, R. (2011). Maximising opportunities to detect verbal deception: Training police officers to interview tactically. Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, 8, 189-202. Gudjonnson, G. (2006). Sex offenders and confessions: How to overcome their resistance during questioning. Journal of Clinical Forensic Medicine, 13, 203-207. Holmberg, U., & Christianson, S-A. (2002). Murderers’ and sexual offenders’ experiences of police interviews and their inclination to admit or deny crimes. Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 20, 31-45. 

18. Kebbell, M.R., Hurren, E.J., & Mazerolle, P. (2006). Sex offenders' perceptions of how they were interviewed. Canadian Journal of Police & Security Services, 4, 67-75. Kebbell, M.R., Alison, L.J., & Hurren, E.J. (2008). Sex offenders' perceptions of the effectiveness and fairness of humanity, dominance, and understanding of cognitive distortions in police interviews: A vignette study. Psychology, Crime and Law, 14, 435-449. Leahy-Harland, S. (2012).Police interviewing of serious crime suspects. Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the School of Psychology at the University of Leicester. Milne, R., & Bull, R. (1999). Investigative interviewing: Psychology and practice. Chichester: Wiley. O’Connor, T., & Carson, W. (2005). Understanding the psychology of child molesters: A key to getting confessions. The Police Chief, 72, December, 1-7. St-Yves, M., & Deslauriers-Varin, N. (2009). The psychology of suspects’ decision-making during interrogation. In R. Bull, T. Valentine, and T. Williamson. (Eds.) Handbook of psychology of investigative interviewing. (pp. 1-16). Chichester: Wiley.