From Verbal Account to Written Evidence: Do Written Statements Generated by Officers Accurately Represent What Witnesses Say?

Rebecca Milne,Lorraine Hope,Jemma Hodgkins,Colin Clarke,Jordan Nunan

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.774322

Abstract

Most countries compile evidence from witnesses and victims manually, whereby the interviewer assimilates what the interviewee says during the course of an interview to produce an evidential statement. This exploratory research examined the quality of evidential statements generated in real world investigations. Transcribed witness/victim interviews (N = 15) were compared to the resultant written statements produced by the interviewing officer and signed as an accurate record by the interviewee. A coding protocol was devised to assess the consistency of information between what was said by the interviewee in the verbal interview and what was reported in the written statement. Statements contained numerous errors including omissions, distortions, and the inclusion of information not mentioned in the verbal interview. This exploratory work highlights an important area for future research focus.

Highlights

Witnesses are central to most criminal cases; some have argued they provide the most critical evidence in court (Zander and Henderson, 1993)
Witnesses provide their accounts at two separate points of the criminal justice process; first when interviewed during the investigation and later when giving evidence during criminal proceedings (Westera et al, 2011)
The criminal justice system relies on the accuracy of this statement to avoid ill-informed investigative and legal decisions

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Witnesses are central to most criminal cases; some have argued they provide the most critical evidence in court (Zander and Henderson, 1993). The criminal justice system relies on the accuracy of this statement to avoid ill-informed investigative and legal decisions This exploratory research examined the quality of evidential statements taken in real world investigations and, assessed the extent to which the written statements produced were consistent with the content of the associated verbal interviews. In the United Kingdom, McLean (1995) examined 16 formal witness-police interviews and found that none of the statements contained all the relevant information reported by witnesses These types of omission errors may be due to the cognitive load inherent in the multitude of tasks that constitute the statement taking process, for example, actively listening to the interviewee, formulating which questions to ask, assimilating the information reported, and taking comprehensive notes (Fisher et al, 2014; Kleider-Offutt et al, 2015; Hanway et al, 2021). We sought to identify any inconsistencies emerging in this translative process and describe the nature of those inconsistencies using a comprehensive coding protocol

MATERIALS AND METHODS

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

ETHICS STATEMENT