A lesson I remember my mom teaching my brother and I when we were younger was that for any reason if we ever were being interrogated by the police to not speak until we had a lawyer present. We had watched a special on the news of how police use harsh tactics when interrogating witnesses and lead them to false confessions. The television special noted on how witnesses may not have even had any details of the crime but after hearing details from the police officers they were “thrown” enough details to put a story together to please the officers with a false confession.
The clip below talks about how false confessions can happen.
The most important tool that any witness can use is their right to the fifth amendment. also known as the Miranda rights.
https://prezi.com/krne6n9gfcuh/copy-of-miranda-warning/
Human tendencies can influence the situation in an interrogation that could potentially lead to a false confession (PSU WC, 2015). Much of this is also the result of a self-fulfilling prophecy. This states that a persons expects a situation to carry out will influence their behavior as well as other’s behavior to confirm the person’s beliefs (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012).
Psychologist have found that cognitive interviews are a better alternative to interrogations. In a cognitive interview the interviewer will ask open ended questions and use strategic silence, as well as follow up questions that focus on using the interviewees’ own words. This system is better to promote good listening skills, increase trust, and opportunities to extract more accurate information. It has been shown that with the use of cognitive interviews information from a witness can be increased from 20-50% without the chance of losing accuracy (Schneider et al., 2012).
It is clear that there are techniques that are better suited to find more information as well as lessen the chance that a witness could give a false confession. It is always important to remember that as a witness you do have the right to remain silent. Even if you feel you are safe, you can not always trust that a police officer will be using more accurate techniques such as the cognitive interview technique. When in doubt, zip it!
References
Pennsylvania State University World Campus (PSU WC). (2015). PSYCH 424: Applies Social Psychology. Lesson 8: The Legal System. Retrieved from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/sp15/psych424/001/content/09_lesson/less08_02.html
Schneider, F., Gruman, J., & Coutts, L. (2012). Chapter 11: Applied Social Psychology to the Criminal Justice System. In Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems (2nd ed., p. 257). Los Angeles: Sage.