Research On When To Reveal Information To Suspects

1. Research On When To Reveal Information To Suspects Professor Ray Bull

2. 2. Benefits of recording interviews As we all know, one of the several benefits of recording interviews with suspects is that such recordings can tell us much about how to continue to try to improve interviewing. Around the world, due to perceived substantial improvements in England and Wales (as illustrated, for example, by published research) more and more countries are becoming very interested in conducting such recordings (e.g. Japan, the USA).

3. 3. Advice from professionals in the USA In 2002 Holmes (formerly of the Miami Police Department) published a book entitled Criminal interrogation: A modern format for interrogating suspectsin which he stated once a suspect had confessed that a “formal confession should be taken without delay while a suspect is in a cooperative mood” (p.115). He also recommended that this post-interrogation/interview formal confession be audio or video recorded, even though he noted that “There is, however, one major drawback ….. In court, the investigator is invariably asked ….. ‘Why didn’t you record the entire interview of the defendant?’ ”. He stated that “I never felt entirely comfortable answering that question. I never said it, but I often wanted to say ‘I didn’t want to give you a sword you could stick in me’ ” (p.116).

4. 4. ‘Early’ findings Some of you will already know that soon after audio-tape recording became common practice in England and Wales (i.e. after 1986) a small number of studies were conducted. For example, However, Baldwin (1993) reported that of the 600 audio or video recorded interviews conducted in the late 1980s that he analysed, “most were short and surprisingly amiable discussions in which it often seemed that officers were rather tentative in putting allegations to a suspect. .....Indeed in almost two-thirds of all cases.....no serious challenge was made by the interviewers to what the suspect was saying”.

5. 5. Few ‘challenges’ Baldwin also found that “Even when the suspect denied the allegation, no challenge was made by the interviewers in almost 40 per cent of cases”. In fact “Over a third of all suspects admitted culpability from the outset”, perhaps because of the police strategy then of revealing to suspects at the beginning of the interview all of the evidence the police had against them. (If the evidence is strong some people confess.)

6. 6. Little ‘shift’ In only 20 of the 600 interviews Baldwin examined did suspects “change their story in the course of an interview. In only nine of these cases was the change of heart attributable to the persuasive skills of the interviewer, and even here only three involved offences of any seriousness..... The great majority of suspects stick to their starting position - whether admission, denial, or somewhere in between - regardless of how the interview is conducted”.

7. 7. Little ‘shift’ (cont’d) Pearse (a senior detective) and Gudjonsson (1996) also noted (in their study of interviews conducted in 1991) that rarely did suspects in their interviews change from denying to admitting the offence. They contended that “suspects enter a police interview having already decided whether to admit or deny the allegations against them” and that police interview techniques have minimal effects on whether an admission occurs. (Recent research which casts doubt on this 1990s contention regarding suspects’ views.)

8. 8. Research on suspects’ views The belief that perpetrators will deny being involved in serious wrong-doing and will not willingly admit/confess has not benefitted from research on the views of offenders themselves. However, recent research involving offenders suggests that only a minority enter the police interview/interrogation with their mind set on denial. For example, in Australia Kebbell, Hurren, and Mazerolle (2006) found • that only a half of the convicted sex offenders with whom they held a research interview said that they had entered the police interview having already decided whether to deny or confess. In fact, less than 20% had planned to deny (and around 30% had planned to confess). • the other 50% entered the police interview not yet having decided whether to deny or confess. Other recent research from Canada, Sweden, the USA has produced similar findings.

9. 9. Use of information – the ‘old’ way Moston, Stephenson, and Williamson (1992) found that in the majority of several hundred taped interviews the police spent little time, if any, trying to obtain the suspects’ accounts of events. Instead they accused the suspects of the offence and asked for their response to such accusations. (See also McConville & Hodgson, 1993.) Moston et al. noted that typically suspects were straightaway accused of the crime and informed, early on, of the information possibly incriminating them. They found, not surprisingly, that when the evidence was strong confessions were more likely. When the police information was not strong the suspects soon became aware of this and, understandably, did not confess.

10. 10 (of 35) A major change The studies that we have so far mentioned all concerned interviews conducted before a major change in police interviewer training occurred in England and Wales. Indeed such studies partly brought about the change. This change (of course) was the ‘PEACE’ approach and training courses (booklets = 127,000) which began in 1992 and which contains much research-based psychology (see Milne & Bull, 1999). Today I am going to focus on the Account aspect of the PEACE approach.

11. 11. Still few challenges? In the mid and late 1990s, as far as one could tell, although the importance of the account phase was emphasised (especially with regard to what not to do in it – for example ask closed questions too soon, interrupt, etc.), there was not a strong focus then in PEACE training upon ‘challenging’ the suspect. (Perhaps because of an ‘over-belief’ in those days concerning what the Criminal Evidence ACT of 1984 actually had sought to eradicate from the interviewing/interrogating of suspects.)

12. 12 However, over time the emphasis on ‘challenging’ skilfully has been growing here in England and Wales. For example, at the end of the 1990s our research found that there was frequent use of • ‘challenging’ • ‘disclosure of evidence’ • ‘emphasising contradictions • ‘open questions’.

13. 13. Tactic usage (%) in 80 interviews Tactics • Disclosure of information 99 • Open questions 99 • Leading questions 91 • Repetitive questioning 84 • Emphasising contradictions 75 • Positive confrontation 75 • Challenge account 71 • Gentle prods 44 • Handling mood 34 • Suggest scenario 29 • Interruptions 21 • Concern 19 • Silence 15 • Maximisation 01 • Situational futility 00 • Minimisation and Intimidation never occurred.

14. 14. Although ‘challenging’, ‘disclosure of possibly incriminating information’, and ‘emphasising contradictions’ occurred in many interviews, these important skills were not all frequently being used in interviews in which suspects moved from denying to admitting/confessing. (See the next slide.)

15. 15. Frequency of Tactic Usage Just Prior to Confessing in 40 ‘confession’ interviews Time period relative to confessing (a) = two time periods prior; (b) = immediately prior time period; (c) time period of confession Disclosure of information 31 40 39 Open questions 38 40 40 Repetitive questions 26 33 26 Leading questions 21 26 21 Handling mood 20 28 24 Contradictions 18 23 15 Positive confrontation 14 24 20 Interruptions 14 16 15 Silence 8 11 10 Challenge account 11 9 3 Suggest scenario 3 5 6 Gentle prods 3 7 5 Concern 2 2 2 Situational futility 0 1 1

16. 16. Improving the skill of ‘challenging’ Because these important skills were not all frequently being used, our recently completed three-year programme of research (funded by the EPSRC and CPNI) had a major focus on how best/when to ‘challenge’ (as had some just-prior research in Sweden).

17. 17. The Swedish/’SUE’ technique In 2007 in Sweden Granhag, Stromwall, and Hartwig emphasised that investigative interviewers often have available to them some potentially incriminating information regarding the suspect whom they are about to interview. (Indeed, we might add, that this is one of the main the reasons why people become suspects.) However, Granhag et al. stated that (i) little research has been conducted on how such information is, or could be, used during interviews, and (ii) “most interviewing and interrogation manuals were (and still are) silent on this issue”.

18. 18. The Swedish/’SUE’ technique (cont’d) These Swedish psychologists conducted a research study to examine if the strategic use during interviews of potentially incriminating information would result in interviewers being better able to discriminate who was lying to them from who was telling the truth. Their study was not of ‘real-life’ investigative interviews but involved as ‘suspects’ students who had or had or had not committed a brief mock theft at the request of the researchers. The strategic use of information during the interviews (the ‘SUE- technique’) involves the following (i) the planning of the interviews during which the interviewers seek out potentially incriminating information from the case files (and other sources).

19. 19. The Swedish/’SUE’ technique (cont’d) (ii) the interview should initially have a free recall phase, before the questioning phase, during which suspects are encouraged to provide relevant information. (This phase is similar to the account phase of the British PEACE approach.) (iii) when the free recall phase has finished, then a questioning phase commences in which the interviewer poses questions relating to the potentially incriminating information that the interviewer possesses but without revealing such information to the suspect.

20. 20 (of 35). The Swedish/’SUE’ technique (cont’d) • only when the suspect has responded to all the questions are the contradictions/inconsistencies between his/her account and the potentially incriminating information revealed (all at once) by the interviewer and the suspect asked to deal with these. This phase is similar to the ‘challenge account’ aspect of the PEACE approach and is one of the tactics/skills that ‘early’ research on (tape recorded) English police interviewing found to be missing once legislation had been brought in to seek to outlaw coercive interviewing.

21. 21. SUE outcomes • Hartwig, Granhag, Stromwall, and Krokvist (2006) found • that use of their ‘Sue-technique’ by new police recruits produced from liars more information that was inconsistent with the potentially incriminating information than did the interviewing techniques used by the ‘untrained’ police trainees (“…who had not received any training in conducting interrogations”) • that whereas those who received no training could only detect whether their interviewees were lying or truth-telling at an accuracy level close to chance (a finding similar to much lie detection research), the ‘SUE-trained’ group achieved regarding their interviewees an average truth/lie detection accuracy level of significantly above chance.

22. 22. SUE implications This Swedish research suggests that wherever possible (e.g. with suspects who are willing, or who can be motivated to provide relevant information, and where effort has been made by interviewers to gather much relevant information pre-interview) an approach of this type should be employed. However, in their study what the truth-tellers and liars did in the event in question only slightly differed and thus only 3 pieces of possibly incriminating information were available to the interviewers. Also the part of the event that the liars were instructed to lie about only lasted about a minute. Thus it was easy for the interviewers to reveal these 3 pieces all at once near to the very end of the interview (and doing this probably did not during the interview increase much the ‘cognitive load’ on the suspects).

23. 23. Tactical Use of Information (i.e. gradual) Our very recent research introduces a new TACTICAL interview condition (part of the ‘GRIMACE’ approach – see below) in which the interviewer in a planned way gradually lets the suspect know about each ‘piece’ of relevant information that the interviewer has available. It involves (i) Gathering reliable information/evidence before interviewing, (ii) Motivating a ‘free recall’ Account from the suspects, and then (iii) During the questioning phase Challenging Effectively (i. e. gradually/incrementally) the suspect (using the information to point out contradictions etc.) about what the suspect has so far said.

24. 24. In our first (and second studies) we used three interview types Early - (Baseline) potentially incriminating information presented together in the initial stages of the interview procedure, before asking suspects for a free account (what some police in the UK used to do and is still done in several countries) Late- (Strategic - SUE) potentially incriminating information presented at the end of the interview procedure (Hartwig et al., 2006) Gradual - (Tactical - GRIMACE) planned but gradual presentation of potentially incriminating information, after a free account, toward the end of the questioning phase

25. 25. Our task Participants took part in a very engaging, hour-long task either as builders (who largely told the truth in their subsequent interviews) or as terrorists (who largely lied in the interviews). They were then interviewed (by an experienced police officer) in order to try to determine whether they were in fact a builder or a terrorist. These interviews were vide recorded (and lasted about 20 minutes). After their interview participants were asked to indicate: • how much cognitive effort their interview caused them, • their achieved level of deceptiveness, • how motivated they had been in the task and interview.

26. 26. Cognitive demand (study one) (Terrorists and builders both equally and highly motivated.) Cognitive demand - builders and terrorists reported that both ‘late’ and ‘gradual’ were more demanding than the ‘early’. For terrorists – ‘gradual’ was reported as the most cognitively demanding.

27. 27. Level of deception achieved (study one) • Terrorists rated themselves as being more deceptive than did the builders (as one would expect). • Terrorists who experienced ‘early’ (disclosure of information) interviews rated themselves as being more deceptive in the interviews than those who experienced the ‘late’ or the ‘gradual’ interviews. • Terrorists rated themselves as being more deceptive in the ‘late’ than in the ‘gradual’ interviews.

28. 28. Post Interview Veracity Judgments (study one) Ten police officers and ten non-police officers each viewed 30 entire interviews (ten from each of the three information disclosure types/conditions - five builders and five terrorists). For each interview they were asked to decide whether the interviewee was being deceptive or not.

29. 29 (of 35). Detecting ‘terrorists’ (study one) Police 66% correct • early = 55% • late = 66% • gradual = 76% Lay persons 54% • early = 52% • late = 53% • gradual = 56%

30. 30 (of 35). Detecting builders (study one) Police 61 % correct • early = 56 % • late = 57 % • gradual = 72 % • Lay people 66 % correct • early = 56 % • late = 66 % • gradual = 69 % Thus, in our first study when the police officers watched interviews in which the revealing of information was gradual (in the questioning phase) their average success rate was 74% (which is much higher than the chance rate of 50%).

31. 31 (of 35). Our second study 160 ‘Suspects’ • 78 Male; 102 female (average age = 27) • 4 male; 2 female (average years of interviewing experience = 25) • each conducted 30 interviews (10 of each type of information disclosure; for 5 of which the suspects were ‘terrorists’ and 5 ‘builders’)

32. 32 (of 35). Cognitive Demand (study two) Terrorists’ rating of the deceptiveness they achieved was much greater for the ‘early’ disclosure interviews than for the ‘late’ or our ‘gradual’. ‘Builders’ and ‘terrorists’ found both the ‘gradual’ and ‘late’ disclosure interviews more cognitively demanding than the ‘early’. ‘Terrorists’ found ‘gradual’ disclosure interviews to be the most cognitively demanding. (This replicates the findings of our first study.)

33. 33 (of 35). Detection rates (study two) These very experienced interviewers achieved the following levels of performance regarding their interviews for ‘terrorists’ for ‘builders’ early = 53% early = 47% late = 64% late = 42% gradual = 73% gradual = 66% (The average detection levels achieved for our ‘gradual’ style of information revelation of 69.5% in this second study and 74% in our first study are among the highest ever found in the research literature.)

34. 34 (of 35). Interviewers’ Veracity Judgment Techniques Regarding those interviews for which the interviewers reported relying on/using only non-verbal (i.e. visual) behaviour (i.e. for about one third of their interviews) the detection rate was below the chance level of 50%. Regarding those interviews for which the interviewers reported relying on/using only verbal behaviour (i.e. for about another of their interviews) the detection rate was above the chance level at 70%. Regarding those interviews for which the interviewers reported relying on/using both on verbal behaviour and non-verbal behaviour (i.e. for about another third of their interviews) the detection rate was 63%.

35. 35 (of 35). Summary of our ‘GRIMACE and ‘gradual’ approach (within the PEACE model) • Devote as much resources as possible to gathering information prior to the interview • Use this information in the planning of the interview (including what ‘defences’ the suspect may use) • Try to obtain some information from the suspect (hence the importance of rapport) • Do not (yet) interrupt his/her account • When account has finished first only ask questions relating to the account • Only then ask other questions • After that gradually introduce information known to interviewer that suspect has not yet mentioned • For each ‘piece’ of information (separately) challenge any contradictions/inconsistencies • In ‘closure’ be sure to then summarise all the contradictions/inconsistencies such that the total weight of evidence is clearly made apparent to the suspect • Ask the suspect if he/she has any more to say

36. The end