NCJ Number
228326
Editor(s)
Tom Williamson,
Becky Milne,
Stephen P. Savage
Date Published
2009
Length
237 pages
Annotation
The chapters of this book - which stem from papers and discussions during the Second International Investigative Interviewing Conference, held at the University of Portsmouth on July 5-7, 2006 - address the history, laws, policies, and practices of interviewing and interrogation in a number of countries, followed by four chapters that discuss current issues in interrogations and investigative interviewing.
Abstract
Part I contains six chapters on the history, laws, policies, and practices of interviewing and interrogation in the following countries: Australia, the United Kingdom, the Nordic region (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden), France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States. The chapters focus on background events and cases in these countries in which improper, coercive, and manipulative investigative interrogation practices have produced false confessions. Legislative responses to this circumstance are reviewed. This legislation has focused on the electronic monitoring of police interrogations and police training in proper investigative interviewing and interrogation. Part II contains four chapters on current issues in interrogation and investigative interviewing. One chapter critically analyzes the utilitarian case for torture and the situational factors that influence some people to become torturers. It argues that there is no justifiable use of torture on utilitarian grounds, since state policies and practices of torture not only intensify an enemy's resolve to fight, but also undermine core human rights as well as the professional and ethical codes of civilized societies. Another chapter promotes a therapeutic jurisprudential approach to investigative interviewing in which the interviewer promotes the psychological well-being of the interviewee (whether a suspect, victim, or witness) in order to enhance memory, the accuracy of information, and the expression of feelings about the crime at issue. A third chapter proposes basing interview tactics on "cognitive load" as a means of detecting deception. The concluding chapter reviews current issues in detecting deceit. Chapter references and a subject index