The collection of evidence

• Reid’s 9 steps of interrogation (suspects)

  interrogation is built around active persuasion by moral justification. The suspect is accused of the crime at an early stage and the rest of the interrogation revolves around that. However, this method can lead to false confessions and wrongful convictions.
• Gudjonsson

  • voluntary false confession
  • Coerced compliant confession
  • Coerced internalised confession

  Gudjonsson studied a 17 year old boy accused of two murders who made a false confession after being interviewed for 14 hours by the police. He had an average IQ and his personality was a stable extrovert, but he did score highly on the Gudjonsson suggestibility scale.
• Cognitive Interview (witnesses)

  this technique is based around four memory retrieval techniques which aim to gather as much accurate information as possible.

  • Reinstating context
  • Multiple retrieval
  • Varied retrieval
  • Focused concentration

  Fisher investigated the effectiveness of the cognitive interview technique and found 47% more information was recorded in the post training interview.
• MEMON & HIGHAM

  Part 1- context reinstatement is the most effective component

  Part 2- You can’t compare the cognitive interview with the standard police interview because they’re too different. The cognitive interview and structured interview have similar accuracy rates but cognitive interview elicits more information.

  Part 3- it doesn’t help us understand if witnesses only recall what they are certain of so not an effective measure of memory

  Part 4- to teach the cognitive interview technique there should be a 2 day training program led by an officer and there should be feedback afterwards
• APPLICATION - Interrogation (suspects)

  A suspect is accused of a crime at the start of the interrogation and the rest of the interrogation revolves around that.
• APPLICATION - Cognitive Interview (witness)

  The four components of the cognitive interview typically elicit more information.
• APPLICATION - PEACE Interview technique (witnesses and suspects)

  A non-accusatory, information gathering approach. It aims to establish and maintain a rapport that enables them to communicate more effectively.

  • planning
  • engaging
  • account clarification
  • closure
  • evaluation

  WALSH & BULL- those who used PEACE were significantly more likely to obtain the comprehensive account or full confession.