Crisis negotiation: from suicide to terrorism intervention

Abstract

Authors' Biographies Simon Wells is currently researching communicating with antagonistic people. He is particularly interested in how research can be translated into practice, as Simon is a Crisis Negotiator and was the United Kingdom Course Director for Hostage and Crisis Negotiation. Recently, Simon has been using research and research methods to further our understanding of communicating with individuals involved in terrorist activity, in particular kidnapping and hostage taking.

‘An error is feedback’: the experience of communication error management in crisis negotiations

“…The use of negotiators is viewed as an effective method to respond to crisis incidents, because the use of a tactical intervention is known for placing greater risk on victims (Noesner, 1999). To be effective, the negotiator must make sense of what is going on and engage with the perpetrator's needs perception of what is occurring (Wells, Taylor, & Giebels, 2013). According to Weick, Sutcliffe, and Obstfeld (2005, p. 409) (Donohue & Taylor, 2003).…”

Communication Error Management in Law Enforcement Interactions: A Sender’s Perspective

“…The negotiation was ended after 5 minutes. We decided to focus on the first 5 minutes because this time is important for creating a first impression and may set the scene for the remaining interaction (Wells, Taylor, & Giebels, 2013). It also ensured the interactions were comparable (i.e., level of the relationship, no interference of a second person).…”

Science‐based interviewing: Information elicitation

“…It is likely that the subject will need encouragement to continue talking, for many reasons: (a) It may be hard to disabuse him of the notion that he should be just responding to questions; (b) most people naturally edit stories (e.g., when someone asks, “How is your day going?”, they seldom want a fully detailed account of your every moment); (c) if the event was relatively distant in time, they may need time to recall details; or (d) they are telling a partial truth or cover story and want to keep it as short and simple as possible. Whatever the reason, the investigator at this point can simply use active listening skills (Royce, ; Wells, ; Wells et al, ) to support the conversation; these are what we do naturally when we listen to an engaging story from a friend: “uh‐huh …,” “go on …,” nodding, leaning forward, and appearing pleasant and interested. A bit of silence is useful as well: If the subject stops talking and appears to still be thinking (he is likely to not be looking at the interviewer, as direct eye contact is distracting), then letting a few seconds of silence pass by is highly effective (Kelley, ; Shepherd, , ; Wells, ).…”

“…(c) if the event was relatively distant in time, they may need time to recall details; or (d) they are telling a partial truth or cover story and want to keep it as short and simple as possible. Whatever the reason, the investigator at this point can simply use active listening skills (Royce, 2005;Wells, 2014a;Wells et al, 2013) to support the conversation; these are what we do naturally when we listen to an engaging story from a friend: "uh-huh …," "go on …," nodding, leaning forward, and appearing pleasant and interested. A bit of silence is useful as well: If the subject stops talking and appears to still be thinking (he is likely to not be looking at the interviewer, as direct eye contact is distracting), then letting a few seconds of silence pass by is highly effective (Kelley, 1950;Shepherd, 1986Shepherd, , 1988Wells, 2014a).…”

“…Similarly, the negotiator carefully chose his words when conveying his reason for talking to the person in crisis by describing himself as working with the police as opposed to being part of them. Such subtle nuances in language use are known to have a significant impact on the receiver's perceptions of the communicator (Wells, ; Wells, Taylor, & Giebels, ). In this case, the negotiator hoped that it would reduce the perpetrators sense of being told what to do by authority figures (social influence).…”