TECHNIQUES OF CONDUCTING INTERROGATION DURING POLICE INVESTIGATION OF CRIMES

Abstract

Modern interrogation is a study in human nature with great level of psychological manipulation which is used by police officer. The main characteristic of a police interrogation is that the suspect is under strong psychological pressure from the interrogator in order to speak the truth and to give the confession. The main purpose of a police Interrogation is to obtain a confession and to come to the objective truth, or other critical information about the crime, from an interviewed suspect, who is subject of interrogation. Interrogation (also called questioning or interpellation) is interviewing as commonly employed by officers of the police or other law enforcement agencies with the goal of extracting a confession or incriminating statements. Subjects of interrogation are often suspects involved in crimes. Information from victims and witnesses is usually obtained through interviews. Interrogation may involve a diverse array of techniques, ranging from developing a rapport with the subject to outright torture.The main object of this paper is police interrogation, which is theoretically and descriptively analyzed through its various methods and techniques that are part of the process of extracting the truth and getting a confession from the suspects. For that aim, particular attention is paid to criminal operational aspects of contemporary Reid technique, and also presented examples of its application in the police interrogation. The Reid technique is a method of questioning subjects and assessing their credibility. The technique consists of a non-accusatory interview combining both investigative and behavior-provoking questions. If the investigative information indicates that the subject committed the crime in question, the Reid Nine Steps of Interrogation are utilized to persuade the subject to tell the truth about what they did. The Reid technique is a trademarked interrogation technique widely used by law enforcement agencies in North America. The technique (which requires interrogators to watch the body language of suspects to detect deceit) has been criticized for being difficult to apply across cultures and eliciting false confessions from innocent people.The purpose of this paper is through scientific explanation to raise the importance and quality of police interrogation as one of the methods for getting to the truth, especially in criminal cases where there is a lack of other evidence.