The role of evidence in the interviewing of suspects: an analysis of Australian police transcripts

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to determine the role of evidence in the interviewing of suspects.Design/methodology/approachAnalyses were made of 55 interview transcripts about the questioning of suspected sex offenders by officers of an Australian police service.FindingsIn 22 per cent of these interviews the suspect actively attempted to discover what the evidence against them was and in 9 per cent the interviewer attempted to learn of the suspect's knowledge of this evidence. Interviewers tended to favour a strategy of first asking the suspect to provide a free account of their role in the alleged crime. If this approach failed to elicit a confession, interviewers would then disclose at least some of the evidence against that suspect. In 93 per cent of the interviews some form of evidence disclosure was made by the interviewer; this was usually achieved by referring to the evidence indirectly rather than explicitly.Originality/valueAlthough such disclosures of information seemed to have little impact on suspects' decisions to confess, this study illustrates the important role of evidence in the suspect interviewing process.

Police officers' use of evidence to elicit admissions in a fictitious criminal case

“…It could be argued that in self‐report studies, investigators may provide answers that are socially desirable; thus, these responses may not fully reflect their behavior in real life. However, this concern may be unfounded because the findings from archival studies examining investigators' evidence use in various countries (in the United States, Leo, ; in Australia, Sellers & Kebbell, ; in the UK, Walsh & Bull, ) were in line with the findings obtained from investigators' self‐reports in the same countries (in the United States, Kassin et al, ; in Australia, Smith & Bull, ; in the UK, Walsh et al, ).…”

“…In these studies, the perception of the evidence referred to the suspect's view about the amount of information the interviewer held about the crime (Hartwig et al, ). Research shows that guilty suspects typically form a hypothesis about what information the interviewer might have about them (e.g., Moston & Engelberg, ; Sellers & Kebbell, ). Moreover, counter‐interrogation strategies refer to the suspect's attempts to convince the interviewer of his or her innocence (Granhag & Hartwig, 2008).…”

The Impact of Evidence Type on Police Investigators’ Perceptions of Suspect Culpability and Evidence Reliability

“…Gehl and Plecas (2016) provided a good illustration of the role of evidence in investigations: "Evidence forms the building blocks of the investigative process and for the final product to be built properly, evidence must be recognized, collected, documented, protected, validated, analyzed, disclosed, and presented in a manner which is acceptable to the court" (p. 33). As described, criminal evidence is indispensable in every phase of police investigations and can significantly influence police investigators' varied decision-making considerations, such as guilt-presumption (Kassin et al, 2003) and interviewing styles (Häkkänen et al, 2009;Leo, 1996;Sellers & Kebbell, 2011). When police investigators make wrong decisions with respect to the evidence that they hold, these can be the source of error, causing bias to snowball to forensic experts or even prosecutors, eventually leading to injustice (a psychological phenomenon that bias can grow in strength and momentum as different elements of an investigation affect one another; Dror et al, 2017; see also Dror, 2018).…”

“…This evidence could demotivate the CSI team during the follow-up collection process, for example, causing them to pay insufficient attention to the rest of the crime scene. This can happen because the investigators may believe that the DNA evidence is already strong enough for prosecuting the case (Leo, 1996;Sellers & Kebbell, 2011). Also, criminal detectives who hear information about the DNA found by their colleagues can be influenced, such that they perceive the suspect as more culpable, prepare less for reading the case details, and employ more direct and guilt-presumptive tactics (Häkkänen et al, 2009;Leo, 1996;Soukara et al, 2002).…”

“…Therefore, guilty suspects are eager to draw inferences as to how much evidence the police hold to avoid looking dishonest, attempting to form a hypothesis about the amount of existing evidence that incriminates them (Hartwig et al, 2007). Research shows that how suspects perceive evidence is the most significant factor shaping their forthcoming strategies (Brimbal & Luke, 2019;Hartwig et al, 2014;Luke et al, 2014;Sellers & Kebbell, 2011) and the outcome of interrogation (Deslauriers-Varin, Lussier, & St-Yves, 2011). For instance, if the police have strong evidence (e.g., DNA evidence), suspects are more likely to be forthcoming (i.e., confess) or less likely to deny the crime by adjusting their behavior to their inference as to the interviewer's knowledge (Luke et al, 2014).…”