Forensic Psychology For Dummies (51 page)

C
hanges: Note reactions of the respondent that are different from the baseline.

D
iscrepancies: Observe variations in reactions in different channels of communication.

E
ngagement: Create a comfortable context for continuing rapport.

F
ollow-up: Explore corroborating evidence from other sources.

The IEE is a set of guidelines for establishing the truth in a police interview and draws on Ekman’s work of how people reveal their emotions while under stress, which I describe in more detail in the earlier section ‘Micro-twitches’.

The nearest equivalent UK police interview guidelines to the IEE is the English and Welsh PEACE, created with the help of forensic psychologists to improve the quality of interviews and combat false confessions.

Interrogating suspects

In the US, there are fewer constraints on police practice when obtaining a confession or getting vital information out of a suspect than in the UK. Certain US police procedures would raise eyebrows if they were tried out in a British court. For example, in the US you have
interrogations
as well as the more benign sounding
interviews,
the difference being:

An interrogation aims at obtaining a confession or evidence leading to a conviction.

A police interview aims at revealing the truth in as much detail as possible.

Before the introduction of the PEACE procedure that I describe in Chapter 4 the UK police also had a ‘confession culture’ in which the purpose of interviewing a suspect was to gain a confession.

During an interrogation the interviewer works at persuading the suspect that it’s in his best interests to confess, by direct challenges or using spurious techniques (like trying to uncover lies by using lies) which can include:

Using undercover police officers for obtaining a confession. In Britain, it’s illegal for undercover police officers to entrap people or force a confession, but in Canada such undercover operations are often used to force a confession from a suspect.