The purpose of this study is to explore sex offenders' perceptions of how the police should interview suspected sex offenders to facilitate confessions, and to investigate whether there is a relationship between sex offenders' perceptions of how the police interviewed them and their decisions to confess or deny. Forty-three convicted sex offenders were interviewed using two 35-item questionnaires that contained five questions on each of seven interviewing strategies. An additional 20 violent offenders were included for comparison purposes. The strategies were evidence presenting strategies, ethical interviewing, displays of humanity, displays of dominance, use of minimization and maximization techniques, and demonstrating an understanding of sex offenders' cognitive distortions. One questionnaire concerned how the police should interview sex offenders and the other concerned how they perceived the police who interviewed them. Generally speaking, evidence presenting strategies, ethical interviewing, and displays of humanity were perceived to increase the likelihood of a confession. Interviewer dominance was perceived to be associated with a reduction in the likelihood of a confession. Interviewing suspects 3 Sex offences are difficult to prove because prosecutions typically rely on the victim's word against that of the offender and, unlike many other offences, sex offences most often occur within personal settings with few corroborating witnesses (Greenfield, 1997). Consequently, confession evidence can prove invaluable because the likelihood of securing a conviction is greatly increased (Kassin & Neumann, 1997; but see also Gudjonsson, 2003, for a discussion of the problems associated with false confessions). Further, confessions reduce the likelihood of the victim having to give evidence in court, thereby countering the potentially negative impact on the victim of testifying (Epstein,

Forty-three convicted sex offenders read each of four different offence vignettes that involved a man forcing a female victim into sex and the offender's subsequent police interview. The experimental manipulation involved giving participants each of four different scenarios concerning how the police interviewed the offender. These were interviews characterized by humanity, dominance, displaying an understanding of sex offenders' cognitive distortions, or a neutral, control interview. Participants were required to rate the interviews on a variety of dimensions, such as the offender's likelihood of confessing, and the fairness of the interview. Where participants were told the man had been interviewed with humanity and compassion, they rated the offender as more likely to confess and rated the interview as fairer than the other conditions. In contrast, participants rated the offender interviewed with a dominant approach as less likely to confess, and for this procedure to be less fair than the other conditions. Displaying an understanding of sex offenders' cognitive distortions appeared to have had no influence on perceived likelihood of confessions but was perceived to make the crime appear less serious.

Administrative data are crucial to the “big data” revolution of social science and have played an important role in the development of child maltreatment research. These data are also of value to administrators, policy makers, and clinicians. The focus of this paper is the use of administrative data to produce and replicate longitudinal studies of child maltreatment. Child protection administrative data have several advantages. They are often population-based, and allow longitudinal examination of child maltreatment and complex multi-level analyses. They also allow comparison across subgroups and minority groups, remove burden from individuals to disclose traumatic experiences, and can be less biased than retrospective recall. Finally, they can be linked to data from other agencies to explore comorbidity and outcomes, and are comparatively cost and time effective. The benefits and challenges associated with the use of administrative data for longitudinal child maltreatment research become magnified when these data are used to produce replications. Techniques to address challenges and support future replication efforts include developing a biographical understanding of the systems from which the data are drawn, using multiple data sources to contextualize the data and research results, recognizing and adopting various approaches to replication, and documenting all data coding and manipulation processes. These techniques are illustrated in this paper via a case study of previous replication work.

Sexual assault is the offence least likely to be reported to police and, when reported, often does not proceed to court (Lievore 2005). Two reasons for this are victim reluctance to relive the experience in testimony and cross examination, and the difficulty of presenting a case with no witnesses to corroborate evidence. Research by the Institute (Taylor & Joudo 2005) has shown how difficult it is to secure convictions in adult sexual assault cases. The study reported here investigates ways of improving the likelihood of a guilty offender confessing and is based on interviews with offenders and police. The authors suggest that the credibility of the evidence and the manner in which it is presented to the suspect can affect the likelihood of securing a confession. Although the numbers in the study are relatively small, they are indicative of practical measures that have the potential to improve the efficacy of the criminal justice system for victims of sexual assault. The broader impact would be in considerable benefits accruing to the judicial system.

Forty participants were asked to commit a mock-crime that involved them stealing a cell-phone. Later the mock-offenders were questioned and evidence was presented to them from a witness who was said to have seen the offence. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions in which they were presented with a witness statement that either contained detailed information concerning their description and their actions, or not-detailed information. For half the participants in each condition the information was correct, while for the other half some of the information was incorrect. The results show that participants were more likely to confess if the evidence against them was accurate, but the level of detail of the evidence made no difference. Participants who had accurate evidence presented against them felt more guilty than those who had less accurate evidence against them. The results are discussed in relation to police interviewing techniques.

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