INTERVIEWS
Lessons learnt from false confessions
The relationship WZ has with academic groups and organisations like "The Innocence Project" has provided great insight into the understanding of mistakes and errors that can arise during the investigative interview process. One of those is having a better understanding of how and why false confessions might occur.
While there might be several contributing factors to a false confession, it's important to understand that there are three different types of false confession: Voluntary, Coerced-Compliant and Coerced-Internalized.
The final two are the ones in-which you have a direct impact.
Coerced-Compliant is a result of coercive techniques used by the interviewer where your subject may feel there is no other option but to be compliant with the interviewer’s demands. Coerced-Internalized is a result of coercive techniques where the interviewer is fact-feeding or contaminating facts of the case or the subject’s narrative, leading to memory distrust.
In either case, it's important to remember that during the investigative interview process you must never make any threats or promises. You don’t negotiate, offer leniency or minimize their actions to the point they don’t take responsibility.
Combine this with no fact-feeding or providing excuses or details then you can get more accurate and actionable information and mitigate the risk of getting faulty information or even false confessions.
