Douglas Starr: Do Police Interrogation Techniques Produce False Confessions? : The New Yorker
Do Police Interrogation Techniques Produce False Confessions? Yes, from too much of the Reid approach
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/12/09/131209fa_fact_starr MT @MMLipinski
DEPT. OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE
THE INTERVIEW
BY DOUGLAS STARR
DECEMBER 9, 2013
Key points of the the Reid Technique:
– anxiety as a hallmark of lying
– focus on non-verbal cues – e.g. face touching, averting eyes, arm crossing, &c.
– downplaying moral consequences without mentioning legal ones – story construction via picking from multiple choices
– subtle lies from the interrogator
vs. PEACE Approach
– focus on content and logical contradictions, which give rise to a cognitive load, instead of non-verbal cues
– open ended Qs instead of multiple choice
Reid’s approach was called in question for yielding false confessions by psychological experiments such as the “alt key test” .