Police Interviewing and Interrogation: A Self-Report Survey of Police Practices and Beliefs
L. H. Colwell Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX
0
C. A. Meissner University of Texas at El Paso
, El Paso,
TX
1
R. A. Leo University of San Francisco School of Law
,
San Francisco, CA
2
S. M. Kassin Williams College
, Williamstown,
MA
3
S. M. Kassin ( ) Department of Psychology, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York
, 445 West 59th Street,
New York, NY 10019-1199
4
K. D. Richman University of San Francisco, Department of Sociology
, 2130 Fulton Street,
San Francisco, CA
By questionnaire, 631 police investigators reported on their interrogation beliefs and practicesthe first such survey ever conducted. Overall, participants estimated that they were 77% accurate at truth and lie detection, that 81% of suspects waive Miranda rights, that the mean length of interrogation is 1.6 hours, and that they elicit self-incriminating statements from 68% of suspects, 4.78% from innocents. Overall, 81% felt that interrogations should be recorded. As for self-reported usage of various interrogation tactics, the most common were to physically isolate suspects, identify contradictions in suspects' accounts, establish rapport, confront suspects with evidence of their guilt, and appeal to self-interests. Results were discussed for their consistency with prior research, policy implications, and methodological shortcomings.
-
Largely as a result of recent DNA exonerations, many of which had contained false confessions
in evidence, a spotlight of scrutiny has been cast on the processes of police interviewing and
interrogation. In recent years, a number of researchers have sought to systematically study
various aspects of these processes (Kassin, 1997, Kassin & Gudjonsson, 2004; Gudjonsson,
2003; Leo, 1996a; Ofshe & Leo, 1997). Now, however, a steady stream of false confession
stories emanating from New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, and other major U.S. cities
are inundating newspapers and television news media on a regular basis (see Drizin & Leo,
2004; Leo & Ofshe, 1998). Many of these stories recount horrific tales of psychologically
and, in some cases, physically abusive interrogations of children and adults, including many
who were cognitively impaired. While it is necessary to shed light on the problem, as research
has done, it is also important to know the extent to which the cases that come to public light
represent practices that are common or extraordinary.
Forty years ago, the United States Supreme Court lamented the relative absence of empirical
information about what constituted common or routine police interrogation practices. In its
landmark decision in Miranda v. Arizona (1966), the Court wrote that, Interrogation still takes
place in privacy. Privacy results in secrecy and this in turn results in a gap in our knowledge as
to what in fact goes on in the interrogation room (p. 448). To fill this gap in its own analysis,
this Court surveyed and critiqued then-existing police interrogation training manualsmost
notably, Inbau and Reids (1962) Criminal Interrogation and Confessions, which is now in its
fourth edition (Inbau, Reid, Buckley, & Jayne, 2001). Although the number of interrogation
manuals and programs has increased over the last forty years (Leo, 2004), one cannot determine
from them what constitutes common police practices.
Since Miranda, researchers have used an array of methods to fill in this empirical gap.
This literature is comprised of individual case studies (e.g., Gudjonsson & MacKeith, 1990),
archival analyses of actual case documents (e.g., Leo & Ofshe, 1998; Drizin & Leo, 2004),
observations of taped interrogations (e.g., Moston, Stephenson, & Williamson, 1992; Ofshe
& Leo, 1997), retrospective self-reports of suspects (e.g., Gudjonsson & Sigurdsson, 1999;
Gudjonsson, 2006), and laboratory and field experiments (e.g., Kassin & Kiechel, 1996; Kassin,
Meissner, & Norwick, 2005; Russano, Meissner, Narchet, & Kassin, 2005). In addition, a number
of social scientists, journalists, and legal scholars have directly observed police practices inside
the interrogation room (e.g., Corwin, 2003; Leo, 1996a; Simon, 1991; Skolnick, 1966; Wald
Ayres, Hess, Schantz & Whitebread, 1967). As a result of this activity, there is now a substantial
literature on various aspects of the psychology of police interrogations and confessions (Kassin
& Gudjonsson, 2004; Gudjonsson, 2003).
A number of issues have attracted attention in recent research. One concerns the extent to
which law enforcement professionals can accurately distinguish between truthful and deceptive
statements. Police investigators have confidence in their ability to make such judgments during a
pre-interrogation interview, judgments that often determine whether they interrogate suspects or
send them home. This confidence stems from some combination of on-the-job experience and law
enforcement training programs that promise to increase judgment accuracy. For example, John
E. Reid and Associates claims that (...truncated)