Success Within Criminal Investigations: Is Communication Still a Key Component?

Abstract

Two new studies are reported here. These asked today’s investigators a number of important questions relating to investigative success. What did they consider amounted to success within volume crime investigations? How did they think success should be measured? What, in their view, made good or successful volume crime investigators? In relation to skills, abilities and characteristics required to be successful, what did volume crime investigators in the modern era think? Previous research provided a sense of what was required to be successful, and many studies had identified communication skills as the key component of investigative success. This research explored whether previous studies were still relevant today. Study one asked: what is success and how should it be measured? What makes a successful investigator? How important to success are thirty skills, abilities and characteristics, derived from previous research? Study two asked respondents to select successful investigators from amongst their peers and rate them against the same thirty skills, abilities and characteristics derived from prior research. Respondents in Study One rated communication skills as the most important skill when asked to produce a top ten unfettered by choices. They additionally rated communication skills top of the thirty skills identified by previous research. Surprisingly whilst respondents clearly felt communication skills were important, when asked to identify the presence of the skill within successful investigators, it ranked only fourteenth out of thirty. These results demonstrate some consistency with previous research in relation to officer beliefs about the attributes required for success, particularly the importance of good communication skills. When asked to identify their main tasks, respondents identified many activities where good communications could be considered key (such as suspect interviewing, case file preparation, statement taking and witness interviewing). Good communication skills appear to be considered by modern investigators as fundamental to success, and by implication particularly important to many of the individual tasks within an investigation that an investigator needs to perform.