Confessing their Crime: Factors Influencing the Offender’s Decision to Confess to the Police

Abstract

Confessions are crucial to successful police investigations but scholars have significantly overlooked factors that contribute to an offender's decision to confess a crime. This study aims to examine a large array of factors that play a role in the offender's decision to confess a crime to the police and potential interaction effect among them. A total of 221 adult males incarcerated in a federal Canadian penitentiary were recruited. Correctional files, police reports, and offenders' self-reported data were collected and analyzed. Controlling for sociodemographic, criminological, and contextual factors, a series of logistic regression analyses were conducted. Findings highlighted the predominant role of police evidence over and above other factors analyzed. Furthermore, sociodemographic and criminological factors played a more important role in the offender's decision to confess when police evidence was weak. Findings are discussed in light of the current scientific literature on the determinants of offenders' decision to confess their crime.Keywords police interrogation; confession; police evidence; adult offenders; police investigation Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Nadine Deslauriers-Varin, Criminology Program, School of Social Work, Université Laval, Pav. Charles-de Koninck, 1030, Av. Des Sciences-Humaines, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada, G1V 0A6. E-mail: nadine.deslauriers-varin@svs.ulaval.ca CONFESSING THEIR CRIME 2 Confessing their Crime: Factors Influencing the Offender's Decision to Confess to the Police Police interrogation and the offender's confession are two important components of successful police investigations. The offender's confession has been a essential component in a substantial number of cases where criminal charges were laid against a suspect and a number of police interrogations included confessions that were crucial to the corroboration of incriminating facts and findings from the crime scene (Baldwin, 1993;Imbau, Reid, Buckley, & Jayne, 2001;Phillips & Brown, 1998). For example, in the USA, Leo (1996) found that in 33% of the 182 interrogation cases analyzed, evidence was too weak to justify laying charges without the suspect's confession. As well, Phillips and Brown (1998) also found that in 11% of cases reviewed, additional confessions from the suspects contributed to solving crimes for which the suspects had not been arrested. The offender's confession is vital in laying criminal charges and also in proving guilt. For example, in 13% of cases reviewed by McConville (1993) in the UK, the only court evidence was a suspect's confession. However, considering its importance to the success of police interrogations, scholars and researchers have largely overlooked closer examination of the suspect's confession, and only limited empirical studies exist that reveal its prevalence and associated factors. Recent studies have mainly focused on the phenomena of false confession and police investigators' ability to detect deception and false confessions (Blair,...

Suspect Confession of Child Sexual Abuse to Investigators

“…Consistent with recent criminological studies showing that contextual factors best account for suspect confessions (Deslauriers-Varin & St-Yves, 2006;Deslauriers-Varin, St-Yves, & Lussier, 2009;St-Yves & Tanguay, 2009, as cited by ), two of these were contextual factors.…”

Strategic disclosure of evidence: Perspectives from psychology and law.

“…STRATEGIC DISCLOSURE OF EVIDENCE 5 Gudjonsson & Sigurdsson, 1999). Research with incarcerated Canadian offenders also showed that strong police evidence was the most important factor in offenders' decisions to confess (Deslauriers--Varin, Lussier, & St--Yves, 2011). Laboratory-based research has revealed similar results.…”

Japanese Suspect Interviews, Confessions, and Related Factors

“…The most commonly cited individual factor related to confession is age: Younger suspects are more likely to confess, perhaps because they are too immature to cope with the pressure of interrogation and are less knowledgeable about the legal process (Gudjonsson 2003). However, some studies have not found significant effects of suspects' age on confession (e.g., Leo 1996;Deslauriers-Varin et al 2011b). Another factor is criminal history.…”

“…Considering these theoretical models, several researchers (Deslauriers-Varin et al 2011b;Gudjonsson 2003;St-Yves and Deslauriers-Varin 2009) have reported that individual, criminal, and contextual factors affect confession. As noted by St-Yves and Deslauriers-Varin (2009), although the findings of previous studies have been inconsistent, there are some general trends.…”