False Confessions: The “Get a Confession” Philosophy

False Confessions

The “Get a Confession” Philosophy.

When 25% of all the wrongful convictions overturned using DNA are the direct result of false confessions, then it’s time to look at police interview and interrogation training and techniques.

For more than 30 years, cases of wrongful conviction have been under the scrutiny of legal and criminal justice professionals and scholars.  One of the main contributing factors has consistently been identified as false confessions.  So why do we keep teaching the same flawed techniques?

One trend that I have seen for more than 30 years has been the persistent philosophy of investigators / interrogators that the sole objective of any interview or interrogation is to get a confession. Well, if that’s your only objective in an interrogation, rarely will you be disappointed!

Here’s the problem –

1. Having an objective of “getting the confession” perpetuates a mindset on the part of the interviewer than there can be no other conclusions as to who is responsible for committing the crime.
2. “Getting the confession” philosophy almost invariably leads to an accusatory style of interrogation which returns far less information that may be needed to progress a case criminally.
3. “Getting the confession” philosophy and the inevitable accusatory style interrogation always winds up contaminating the subject’s behavior and responses because the interrogator exposes the subject to proprietary case information.
4. Finally, “getting the confession” philosophy leads to the meme exposed by many interrogators and I might add their interrogation trainers that “they wouldn’t confess if they weren’t guilty!  In other words, it’s the suspect’s fault for falsely confessing.  I have actually heard this statement made by officers and interrogation trainers when asked about the problem of false confessions.

It is time to acknowledge that the perpetuation and persistence of false confession cases leads right back to our training academies.  “That’s they way we have always done it” doesn’t cut it as an excuse anymore!

Just my opinion because I am tired of seeing and hearing the crap taught in our academies. Those trainers and academies have to held accountable for ignoring the overwhelming evidence of failing to properly train interview and interrogation techniques and therefore result in such injustices.

Stan B. Walters,
“The Lie Guy®”
TheLieGuy.com
TheLieGuyAcademy.com
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