Forensic Psychology For Dummies (52 page)

Underplaying or even lying on the part of the police about the seriousness of the offence. For example, saying the murder victim survived, or offering the possibility that the killing was an accident.

Telling downright lies, such as saying that uncontroversial evidence of guilt exists or that a co-defendant has already confessed.

The Reid interrogation technique

Fred Inbau and John Reid, two experienced US law enforcement officers, have developed a procedure now widely used in North America, laying out nine steps for carrying out a persuasive interrogation:

1. Being confrontational:
The suspect is told positively that he committed the alleged crime. The idea is that an innocent person immediately and without hesitation denies the offence, whereas a guilty person is evasive.

2. Developing a theme:
The suspect is given reasons for thinking that the crime is less serious than he believes. This is an attempt to let the suspect ‘off the hook’ psychologically, making him feel more secure and less intimidated.

3. Handling denials:
Denials are stopped short in their tracks and the suspect is told to listen to what the interrogator has got to say. This is a way of preventing the suspect thinking his denials carry any weight or of getting into his stride in advancing those denials.

4. Overcoming objections:
The interrogator overcomes the objections the suspect is giving as an explanation or reason for his innocence and so undermines the suspect’s confidence in his own innocence, making him more vulnerable to the assertions of the interrogator.

5. Getting hold of and keeping the suspect’s attention:
When the suspect shows signs of fatigue, the interrogator reduces the psychological (and if necessary physical) distance between himself and the suspect to regain the suspect’s full attention.

6. Handling suspect’s passive mode:
When a suspect’s resistance looks about to break down, the interrogator focuses on the suspect’s main reasons for committing the crime, in order to show signs of understanding and sympathy. The interrogator appeals to the suspect’s sense of decency and honour and possibly religious convictions, using the well-established psychological principle of rewarding behaviour that you want to encourage.

7. Presenting an alternative question:
The suspect is presented with two possible alternatives for committing the crime, one face-saving and the other a repulsive or callous motivation.

8.
Having the suspect tell in his own words various details of the offence:
When the suspect accepts one of the alternatives he’s asked to go into the story in further detail.

9. Converting an oral confession into a written confession:

This gives a further opportunity for ensuring the confession is clear and legally watertight.

There’s a lot of controversy surrounding the use of the Inbau and Reid technique. Some challenges relate to the legality of the whole process of misleading a suspect. Others relate to its likelihood of inducing false confessions. But perhaps the greatest challenge to its usefulness is the claim by some who have studied the technique closely that it just doesn’t work.

Extreme procedures

Sometimes you hear an interrogation being described as ‘extreme’. In reality this is another way of saying that torture is being used: someone is being beaten as a way of getting them to give up information. The moral dilemma put forward is whether torture is acceptable if the information obtained can save one or many lives. However, this argument assumes that torture is a productive way of actually obtaining the truth.

Most experts agree that using torture as a means of getting at the truth is counterproductive. Inflicting extreme physical or mental pain can result in obtaining misleading information or nothing of use at all. Everyone involved is alienated, making it extremely difficult to build any future rapport that may lead to opening up to the truth.

Examining Documents to Help Solve Crimes

Forensic psychology is helpful when examining documents (handwritten, typed or even made from letters stuck together that have been cut out of newspapers) that can be used as valuable evidence in a criminal investigation. Such documents include threatening letters, suicide notes, confessions, declarations in wills and a range of other written material that can play an important part in helping to solve a crime.

The job of examining a document closely is often to find out if it shows criminal intent or is setting out to deceive, such as:

Making a misleading claim: for example, snake oil curing warts.

Describing an event that can lead to extortion or blackmail.

Having dubious authorship: the writer of the text isn’t who he claims to be, as in a forged confession or suicide note.

Sometimes the text offers particular potential as evidence. The following examples are all cases where the written record is the most important part of the crime. In some cases it’s the crime itself. Unlike a crime scene, such as a murder scene, where the detailed actions of the offender have to be worked out from what can be observed, there are some crimes where a document is the actual crime. So the document can be regarded as a ‘crime scene’ and studied as closely as a room with a body in it. Here are some crimes where the document is the crime:

A threatening letter written by the offender giving details of the crime he’s planning to commit. Threatening someone is against the law, so the letter is the crime. As mentioned earlier, when considering ‘extortion’ the examination of this type of letter does also include an assessment of whether the threat is likely to be carried out, but even if it isn’t, it’s still a criminal act.