This article discusses the potential influence of police interrogation techniques on suspects' decisions to confess, even when innocent. It highlights the use of minimization techniques, which can make suspects believe that confessing will lead to a more favorable outcome.
This can decrease (even innocent) suspects’ anxiety to confess, which can lead to coerced confessions . A confession is often seen as the gold standard of evidence in a criminal case, leading to guilty verdicts even when there is no other evidence, when there’s a reason to think the confession was involuntary, and even when other evidence likeof the general public and their knowledge about police interrogations and false confessions .
This survey compared the public’s knowledge to that of experts in the field: psychologists who have published empirical papers in peer-reviewed journals on these topics. The results showed that these two groups agree on certain information about interrogations and confessions. But a lot of the time, the public has ideas about these topics that go against what experts know from their research. This series presents a few key findings that experts want you to know.
This is Part 4. Interrogators offer sympathy and moral justification for committing a crime, which may make people more likely to believe the consequences won’t be so bad if they confess. Modern-day interrogations don’t look like the stereotypical near-torture chambers of the past. No rubber hoses, no bright lights shining in your face, not even Detective Elliot Stabler frombody-slamming you against the wall to get you to talk.
Instead, today’s interrogations may sound, to an untrained ear, like an interrogator is being sympathetic, understanding, kind, or may even be on the suspect’s side. A person accused of stealing from their job may encounter phrases such as, ‘Cost of living is crazy these days… there’s no way someone could support a family on your wage.
’ A suspect accused of committing arson might be told, ‘Hey, this was your first time experimenting with fire, it’s not like you knew what was going to happen. It didn’t even look like there was that much accelerant used. That tells me that a fire of this proportion wasn’t your intent. You were just playing around, and it got out of hand.
’ I didn’t just make these up. These are all recommended ‘minimization’ themes to use with suspects of wrongdoing in a book calledis the name given to this ‘soft-sell’ interrogation technique: it’s when interrogators shift the blame away from the suspect or offer moral excuses that they think the suspect can latch onto to make it easier to confess. On its face, minimization might not seem that bad, especially when it’s compared to the third-degree tactics of the past.
The interrogator isn’t yelling at the suspect—they might even be whispering, or getting close to the suspect, putting a hand on their shoulder, and reassuring them that a jury is going to understand, but only if they can hear the suspect’s side of the story (i.e., if they confess). To the person in the suspect’s seat.
Specifically, the kinds of themes you read above—moral themes that shift the blame away from the suspect and onto something or someone else—can make the suspect think that if they just cooperate with the police and tell them what they want to hear, thatwill go a long way. This isn’t merely wishful thinking or even a stretch on the suspect’s part. Neurotypical people usually have no problem interpreting extra meaning from someone else’s statements. We do this all the time.
Your child says, ‘I’m hungry,’ so you get up and make them a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. You understand that statement to be a request for food, even though that’s not what they explicitly said. The statement ‘I’m hungry’ is just an observation, not a request. But that’s not really how you understand it—you pick up an extra meaning that isn’t exactly in the precise verbal message.
Pragmatism means practical, reasonable, or logical. Inference means how you interpret the meaning of something, or what conclusion you draw about something you encounter or experience. When you ask someone at a party, ‘Where’s Bob? ’ and they respond, ‘There’s a bedroom upstairs to the right,’ it’s reasonable for you to assume that that’s where they last saw Bob, even though that’s not explicitly what they said.
They could merely have been commenting on the layout of the house in a way that’s totally unconnected to your question. But you infer that that’s an answer to your question, because it’s unlikely that they would respond to your inquiry about Bob with something totally unrelated. And so, if a police interrogator says, ‘Hey, I get it. You vandalized that building because you wanted to look cool in front of your friends.
I think a lot of people would have done the same thing in your shoes. It’s not even that big of a spray paint mark, they just have to paint over it and it’s good as new,’ it’s for you to interpret that to mean that if you just tell them what they want to hear, everything will be OK. A jury will understand. Any I get for this won’t be that bad.
The interrogator doesn’t even think this is that big of a deal
Police Interrogation False Confessions Minimization Techniques Anxiety Reduction Coerced Confessions
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