Interviewing and interrogation practices and beliefs, 20 years later: A national self-report survey of American police.

Abstract

Objective: This survey examined current law enforcement beliefs and practices about interviewing and interrogation to gauge whether they have evolved given the research and training developed over the past 20 years. Hypotheses: We hypothesized that police beliefs and practices would have evolved along with research findings over the past 20 years. Method: We surveyed 526 law enforcement officers about the practices and beliefs regarding interviewing and interrogation. We asked questions about officers' beliefs about rates of true and false confessions, time spent in the interrogation room, beliefs about their ability to detect deception, training experience, practices of recording interrogations, and their self-reported use of interrogation techniques. Results: Overall, when we compared our survey with Kassin et al.'s (2007) seminal survey, we found both similar results and evolving positive trends. The average interview was reportedly 1.6 hr, virtually no different from that in Kassin and colleagues' study. In addition, our sample reported that 26.2% of innocent suspects at least partially falsely confessed. Further, whereas Kassin and colleagues found that fewer than one in 10 interrogations were video recorded, we found that now more than half of interrogations are recorded in this way. Conclusions: In a geographically diverse sample of U.S. law enforcement officers, we found significant positive trends toward knowledge and practices informed by research generated over the past decades on interviewing and interrogation. Although causality could not be determined, these findings indicate an evolution of the U.S. law enforcement mindset in a more sciencebased direction. Public Significance StatementThis survey found support for an evolving mindset of U.S. law enforcement officers regarding interviewing and interrogation beliefs and practices. We found that officers reported false confessions as more prevalent, recording of interrogations happened most of the time, and beliefs about deception detection showed a downward trend, compared with 20 years ago. All of these shifts are congruent with research on the topic and demonstrate a potential increase in awareness of the science.