Interrogation Research Articles

Language and Culture as Sources of Inequality in US Police Interrogations

Abstract The aim of the study was to check whether minorities such as LEP/ZEP (limited/zero English proficiency) speakers can expect the same access to justice as competent English speakers in a majority language (US English) justice system. The main hypothesis is that, due to linguistic and cultural factors, the instances of miscommunication in the interrogation of LEP/ZEP suspects and witnesses will be more numerous than in the interrogation of the majority language (English) speakers. The data consist of authentic police interrogations by US law enforcement. All instances of miscommunication were classified based on the linguistic profiles of the interrogations: monolingual English, monolingual Spanish, and bilingual Spanish/English. The analyses were both quantitative and qualitative. Miscommunication occurs more frequently if interrogations are conducted bilingually (via interpreters) and cultural differences are exploited as part of pressure to confess. The main sources of miscommunication identified are (i) the questioning method, (ii) the lack of professional interpreting, and (iii) culture-specific communication patterns. We offer concrete suggestions for ensuring equality before the law for linguistic and cultural minorities.

Institutional and Academic Transcripts of Police Interrogations

The effects of working circumstances and intended uses on the transcripts of police interrogations cannot be underestimated. In the Netherlands, police transcripts are usually drawn up in the course of the interrogation by the interrogator or, when two police officers conduct the interrogation, by the reporting officer. Contemporaneous transcription involves the interrogators in a complex configuration of interactional commitments. They have to find a way to coordinate the talk and the typing, they must transcribe the talk of an event they themselves participate in, they must do justice to the suspects' story while also taking into account the intended readership of the police report, and they must produce a document that can serve as an official piece of evidence in the criminal case. In studying recorded police interrogations and their transcripts I realised that my own transcripts are also related to their intended uses and to my working circumstances. My transcriptions are much more detailed than those of the police, which draws the attention to the differences between them. The most noticeable difference is that police transcripts focus on substance and mine on interaction. Police transcripts are meant to be evidence of the offence and mine of the talk. But there are also similarities. Both police transcripts and those of mine are selective. Police transcripts orient to their relevance for building a case, mine orient to their relevance for my research questions. Both police transcripts and those of mine treat the transcript as the talk it is meant to represent. For a criminal case this means that in court suspects are held accountable for what the police wrote down as their statement, which disregards the fact that the police transcript is a coproduction.

Police Officers' Interrogation Expertise and Major Objectives in Police Service and Training: A Comprehensive Overview of the Literature.

Interrogation is a core task of practical police work. The outcomes of interrogation often provide crucial evidence for solving criminal cases. The success of interrogation depends on interactions between police officers and citizens. Based on a comprehensive literature overview, we propose a three-factor typology for interrogations by police officers. First, the competencies of police officers refer to the application of personal, professional, social, and methodological capabilities. The underlying concept of interrogation refers to the application of both explicit and implicit experience-based interrogation models. Communication refers to the goal-directed application of communication tactics and techniques. According to this typology, we discuss the major objectives of police interrogation in police service and training from police officers’ perspectives. The present study provides guidance for practical police services and training by offering an evidence-based interrogation standard.

The Influence of Police Reporting Styles on the Processing of Crime Related Information

Police records drawn up during or after a suspect's police interrogation play a crucial role in judicial systems and should therefore be factual representations of what occurred in the spoken interrogation. Within the judicial domain, however, little is known about how style of reporting (i.e., the specific language used) affects the interpretation of these facts. Furthermore, the relationship between police record ‘quality’ and variations in judgment of guilt, credibility or reliability has not been studied to date. In three studies, we investigated the influence of three commonly used recording styles (i.e., monolog, recontextualized and question-answer style) on judgments of guilt, credibility, and reliability in fictitious criminal cases. We hypothesized that participants would (1) find records in the question-answer style more credible and reliable than those in the monolog or recontextualized style, and (2) consider the recontextualized style to be the least credible and reliable. Experiment 1 showed that the Q&A style was perceived as more reliable than the other two styles. Experiment 2, a replication in which we also tested new hypotheses based on explorative analyses of Experiment 1, showed no effects of reporting style. To investigate whether the discrepancy in results was due to different scenarios, a third experiment that made use of multiple scenarios was conducted. We found effects of reporting style on perceived accuracy, imageability, and understandability. In sum, this study showed that factors as subtle as reporting style might impact the processing of information in contexts where only factual information should be taken into account.

Discourse Tactic(s) in Police-Suspect Interactions in Ibadan, Nigeria

Existing studies on police interrogation have revealed that investigating police officers (IPOs) often resort to the use of physical force in extracting confessional statements from suspects. However, we maintain that IPOs do not usually subject suspects to torture in a bid to obtain a confession. We therefore examine how IPOs use tactics to achieve confessions in police-suspect interactions (PSIs). Data comprise nine interactions between IPOs and suspects tape-recorded at the Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department, Ìyágankú, Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria. Drawing on Bateson’s framing theory, the study reveals that participants in PSIs resort to accentuation of crime, blaming of a third party, minimisation of crime, deployment of objections, use of alternative questions, avoidance of questions, oblique references, deliberate false statements, and resistance to achieve their respective goals. The study demonstrates that PSIs in Nigeria do not always involve the use of physical force by IPOs.

The Cemetery for theKimsesiz

AbstractThe Turkish cemeteries for the kimsesiz (literally, people who have no one) are graveyards where the state buries the bodies of those people who remain unidentified or unclaimed after a certain period of time. In practice, they are burial sites for the social outcast, namely homeless and underclass people, victims of honor crimes, disowned members of blood families, premature babies, and more recently, unaccompanied refugees. They also contain the bodies of political detainees who have been “disappeared” under police interrogation and state violence, along with radical leftists and Kurdish guerrillas deemed “unidentified.” This article focuses on the cemetery for the kimsesiz in Kilyos, Istanbul in order to discuss the spatial ordering of death in the margins of social and political life in Turkey. These margins may be ethnic, religious, sectarian, or economic as well as gendered or sexed and sometimes medical. A close focus on this mortal topography of margins demonstrates the state's complicated relationship with the category of kimsesiz and the limits of social legibility and belonging in Turkey.

The Truth Machines: Policing, Violence, and Scientific Interrogations in India

ABSTRACTHow do police get witnesses and criminal defendants to tell the truth? And in what ways do the truth‐seeking activities of law enforcement create and remake the identity of the state? These questions lie at the heart of Jinee Lokaneeta's fine book, The Truth Machines. For anthropologists of law and politics, the book offers a lens into the ways that nations try to prevent the torture of citizens, paradoxically by promoting a different kind of torture. It is a story of how state officials move torture from dusty police interrogation rooms into futuristic forensic laboratories and hospitals.

The tale of two countries

Abstract The aim of this research was to compare the quality of language services and of linguistic evidence obtained in UK police interviews and US police interrogations with suspects, witnesses and victims who speak little or no English and have to communicate via an interpreter. This is the first study of its kind based on substantial real-life data from both jurisdictions, which rely on different types of service provision. The data were annotated using NVivo 12 software and the methodology included a quantitative analysis of miscommunication instances that arise as a result of cross-linguistic or cross-cultural contrasts and a qualitative analysis of the interpreting standards and information details recorded in official transcripts. It was discovered that both countries exhibit some advantageous features in their language service provision. although both also have shortcomings that should be responded to and remedied. The US data reveal that the transcripts there are more detailed and more informative, and are produced bilingually and verbatim; this is not the case in the UK context. However, the use of non-professional interpreters in the US, unlike in the UK, where professional interpreters are employed, is shown to be highly problematic. The article concludes with a summary of empirical insights that can be used to improve evidence-gathering, access to justice in multilingual contexts, policy development and the training of law-enforcement and language professionals around the world.

POLA INTEROGATIF PENYIDIK PADA SAKSI AHLI BAHASA PADA KASUS DELIK ADUAN

<p>Legal language can develop in accordance with the confession of the suspect in the Interrogation Report process. The Interrogation Report is a state secret that should not be published to the general public. However, in the interest of this research, the Interrogation Report process is allowed only to the certain extent. The novelty of this research is in the field of data collection which focus on the interrogation of investigators with legal language experts. This study is normative legal research which use normative legal approach and consists of studying legal principles. The data in this study are from police interrogation report 2013 on complaints offence about domestic violence committed by members of the Indonesian police.After analyzing the interrogation result, The results of this research show first, the structure of the discourse of Interrogation report in the complaint offense case at the Central Java Regional Police with the in the following form: opening section, content section, and closing section, which clarify the structure of the content related to the identity of expert witnesses according to scientific expertise, statements of truthful reporting related to the legal realm, clarity based on information and evidence. Second, qualified investigators are needed. This research can give new contribution in the world of linguistics and police research and a reference for further research in the field of pragmatics, critical pragmatics and can also be followed up in the field of forensic linguistics. The study of pragmatics and forensic linguistics is a field of applied linguistics that deserves to be researched in the context of efforts to develop linguistic scholarship. This research data can be developed for forensic linguistic research. Forensic linguistics is a new field of science in the field of applied linguistics.</p>

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Miscommunication in UK Police Interviews and US Police Interrogations

This is the first comparative empirical study of miscommunication in US police interrogations and UK police interviews with suspects. The research was based on an extensive real-life data consisting of 100 transcripts. The main goal was to detect when and why miscommunication occurs in these two policing contexts, whether and how it gets resolved, and what the consequences of miscommunication may be. Miscommunication arises when speech participants draw opposing inferences from the same communicative exchange. Two main sources of miscommunication were identified: a) inferential ambiguity and b) linguistic complexity. The quantitative and qualitative analyses showed that, while the types of miscommunication are shared in the two jurisdictions, their frequencies and functions differ in some respects. Namely, deliberate miscommunication is more likely to be found in the US context while in the UK miscommunication is more likely to occur inadvertently. On the other hand, linguistic complexity gives rise to miscommunication more often in the UK than in US police communication. We discuss the results with respect to the two different approaches to questioning suspects in the two locales and translate our findings into practical applications for the training of law enforcement and language professionals worldwide.

Confession During Police Interrogation: a Decision Tree Analysis

Confession During Police Interrogation: a Decision Tree Analysis

Examining the Validity of Statements made by Suspects in the Course of Police Interrogation in Nigeria

Examining the Validity of Statements made by Suspects in the Course of Police Interrogation in Nigeria

Concealment in Police-Suspect Interaction in Ibadan, Nigeria


 Police-suspect interaction, henceforth, PSI, is an integral aspect of forensic discourse. Existing scholarly works have engaged PSI from the linguistic and non-linguistic viewpoints. However, studies have been silent on the role of concealment in extracting confessional statements from suspects. It is against this backdrop that this study examines the discursive roles of concealment in PSI with a view to describing concealment strategies and their implications in police interrogation. The study is anchored on Dell Hymes’ ethnography of communication (EOC), considering its unequivocal engagement with contextual linguistic resources in representing participants’ goals in discourse. Interrogation sessions on conspiracy, felony, stealing, affray, and illegal possession of arms were tape-recorded at the State Criminal Investigation Department, Iyaganku, Ibadan, Oyo State. The study adopts the non-participant observation technique, unstructured and structured interviews. A discursive engagement of Dell Hymes’ EOC in investigating concealment in PSI Ibadan, reveals that IPOs and suspects adopt veiling, jargonisation, lexical replacement, hedging and deflection as concealment strategies. While suspects resort to concealment to seek exclusion, ignorance, withdrawal and anonymity, IPOs’ concealment strategies were orchestrated to seek suspects’ co-operation, allay suspects’ fears, boost suspects’ confidence, achieve confession with minimal input and protect suspects’ rights during interrogation sessions. Further studies on PSI could engage a comparative analysis of the use of concealment in PSI and civil cases.
 Key words: Forensic discourse, confessional statement, concealment, police-suspect interaction, Ibadan

How Trauma May Magnify Risk of Involuntary and False Confessions Among Adolescents

Empirical research on police interrogation has identified both personal and situational factors that increase criminal suspects’ vulnerability to involuntary, unreliable, or false confessions. Although trauma exposure is a widely documented phenomenon known to affect adolescents’ perceptions, judgments, and behaviors in a wide array of contexts (especially stressful contexts), trauma history remains largely unexamined by interrogation researchers and virtually ignored by the courts when analyzing a confession. This article argues that trauma may operate as an additional personal risk factor for involuntary and false confessions among adolescents by generating both additive and interactive effects beyond youths’ general, developmentally-driven vulnerabilities in police interrogations. First, we briefly review adolescent trauma symptomatology, emphasizing the heterogeneity of adolescents’ responses to trauma. Next, using Leo and Drizin’s (2010) “Three Errors” framework of police-induced false confessions, we systematically apply clinical findings to each of the three police errors—misclassification, coercion, and contamination—to outline the psychological mechanisms through which adolescents with trauma histories may be at increased risk for making involuntary or unreliable statements to police. Finally, we offer considerations for interrogation research, clinical forensic practice, police practices, and courtroom procedures that could deepen our understanding of trauma’s role in the interrogation room, improve the integrity of investigative and adjudicatory processes, and ultimately promote justice for adolescent suspects with trauma exposure.

Themes and methodological issues in Court Interpreting research

The field of Legal Interpreting encompasses a wide variety of contexts including police interviews and interrogations, lawyer-client conferences, tribunal and court hearings and trials. Most of the research carried out in the field to date has concentrated on the discourse of the courtroom in Common Law countries (Berk-Seligson 1988, 1990, 1999; Hale 1997b, 1999, 2004; Mason & Stewart 2001; Pym, 1999; Rigney 1997). This is partly due to the availability of the data, as most courtrooms are open to the public, but also due to the vast amount of research conducted into the language of the courtroom, which has served as a theoretical basis for the study of court interpreting. These studies draw on discourse analysis, the ethnography of language, pragmatics, experimental psychology and forensic linguistics to inform their methods. Other research into legal interpreting has looked at other , non-linguistic aspects of the practice, such as role perceptions and expectations, using social science methods of surveys, interviews and focus groups (Fowler 1997; Kelly 2000; Hale & Luzardo 1997; Angelelli 2004). Fewer studies have concentrated on the other aspects of legal interpreting, such as police interpreting (Krouglov 1999; Berk-Seligson 2000; Russell 2004; Wadensjš 1997) and tribunal hearings (Wadensjš 1992; Mason & Stewart 2001; Barsky 1996). With the exception of a limited number of experimental studies (Berk-Seligson 1990 and Hale 2004) most legal interpreting research studies have been descriptive, qualitative and speculative, providing useful information on the current state of affairs but little on the impact such practices have on the legal process. This contribution will concentrate only on court interpreting research. It will review the major research projects to date, highlight their strengths and weaknesses, identify the gaps that exist in our knowledge of the field andproposefurther research studies tofill such gaps.

Techniques To Exploit Vulnerabilities: Persuasion And Education In Chinese Police Interrogations

AbstractDrawing upon in-depth interviews with frontline police officers, this article examines persuasion and education as a psychological interrogation method routinely applied in Chinese police questioning. It analyses the three tactics employed by the interrogators in inducing the suspect to confess, including utilization of suspects’ personal relationships, their hope for the uncertain future and memories of past experiences. These mechanisms correspond to the three forms of universal vulnerability shared by human beings, namely the individuals’ susceptibility to human dependency, the predicament of irreversibility and uncertainty about the future. This article analyses the ways in which vulnerability as a universal human condition can be exploited by state coercion, and how this coercion produces the moral vulnerability of police.

Contextual factors predict self-reported confession decision-making: A field study of suspects’ actual police interrogation experiences.

Contextual factors predict self-reported confession decision-making: A field study of suspects’ actual police interrogation experiences.

Opening Pandora’s box: The right to silence in police interrogations and the Directive 2016/343/EU

This article examines the provisions of the Directive 2016/343 related to the right to remain silent with special emphasis on pre-trial proceedings and police interrogations. It focuses on the inherent contradictions and unclarities of the respective provisions, particularly when interpreted in light of the respective ECtHR case law. The article also identifies areas, relevant to regulation of suspect interrogations and the right to silence, which are not addressed in the Directive or the ECtHR jurisprudence. It concludes by critically assessing the likely effectiveness of the Directive provisions in ensuring the right to silence in criminal proceedings.

Slow lies: Response delays promote perceptions of insincerity.

Evaluating other people's sincerity is a ubiquitous and important part of social interactions. Fourteen experiments (total N = 7,565; 10 preregistered; 11 in the main article, three in the online supplemental materials; with U.S. American and British members of the public, and French students) show that response speed is an important cue on which people base their sincerity inferences. Specifically, people systematically judged slower (vs. faster) responses as less sincere for a range of scenarios from trivial daily conversations to high stakes situations such as police interrogations. Our findings suggest that this is because slower responses are perceived to be the result of the responder suppressing automatic, truthful thoughts, and fabricating a novel answer. People also seem to have a rich lay theory of response speed, which takes into account a variety of situational factors. For instance, the effect of response delay on perceived sincerity is smaller if the response is socially undesirable, or if it can be attributed to mental effort. Finally, we showed that explicit instructions to ignore response speed can reduce the effect of response speed on judgments on sincerity. Our findings not only help ascertain the role of response speed in interpersonal inference making processes, but also carry important practical implication. In particular, the present study highlights the potential effects that may be observed in judicial settings, because the response speed of innocent suspects may mislead people to judge them as insincere and hence guilty. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Perception, practice and proximity. Qualifying threats as psychological torture in international law.

International law prohibits threats made by state officials when amounting to torture or other forms of ill-treatment (hereafter "ill-treatment"). Yet, there remains a pressing need to better distinguish in practice the threatening acts which amount to torture or illtreatment (and as prohibited) from acts which fall short. Responding to this need, this article reviews the literature and offers a discussion towards functionally conceptualising and, in turn, qualifying threats as torture or ill-treatment. Following a systematic full-text search of databases with the relevant Englishlanguage keywords, journal articles, NGO reports, case-law and UN documents were selected based on their relevance for conceptual, evidentiary and legal critique of threatsas- torture. Prevailing legal reasoning around threats-as-torture centres on the words "real, credible and immediate", with inadequate explication as to their application. To this end, this article proposes that an assessment of the perception of practice and proximity of state authorities to harm could be used to help qualify threats as "real, credible and immediate" and therefore torturous.