The Psychology of Police Investigations

Chapter 3
The Psychology of
Police Investigations
Outline
Police Interrogations
The Reid model of interrogation
Interrogations and the courts
False Confessions
Types of false confessions
Criminal Profiling
Profiling approaches
Problems with profiling
Police Investigations
Rely on witnesses, victims, and suspects to fill
in the details surrounding the crime
Who was involved, what happened, where
and when did it happen, how did it happen,
why did it happen
Evidence is collected through interviews,
interrogations, and confessions
Police Interrogations
There are two goals of a police

interrogation (Kassin, 1997):
Obtain a confession
Gain information that will further the
investigation (e.g., the location of
evidence)
The Coercive Nature of Police

Interrogations
History of coercive measures:

Mid-1900s: whipping suspects to get a
confession
1980s: stun guns used by the NYPD
to
extract confessions
More recently: psychological methods
such as trickery and deceit (e.g., lying
about evidence)
The Reid Model of Interrogation

Most common interrogation method used in
Canada
Involves 3 general stages:
Gather evidence
Conduct a non-accusatorial interview to
assess deception/guilt
Conduct an accusatorial interrogation to
obtain a confession
(continued)

(continued)
The third stage involves 9 steps that are used

to break down the suspects resistance
In general, these steps involve:
Confronting the suspect with his or her
guilt
Providing the suspect with the means to
justify their crime
(continued)

(continued)
Interrupting any statements of

innocence made by the suspect
Obtaining a written confession from
the suspect
The psychology behind this technique is
to make the anxiety associated with
deception greater than the anxiety related
to the consequences of confessing
Interrogation Techniques
In general, interrogations techniques can

be broken down into two categories:
Minimization: Soft sell tactics that
provide a sense of false security
Maximization: Scare tactics that
attempt to intimidate suspects
Problems with the Reid Model of

Interrogation
Assumes that police officers can accurately
detect deception when little evidence supports
this assumption
Officers enter the accusatorial interrogation
with the belief that the suspect is guilty, which
can lead to inappropriate biases
Coercive techniques used in this model may
elicit false confessions
The Admissibility of Confessions

For confessions to be admitted into court they
must be given:
voluntarily and
by a person who is competent
Confessions that are obtained by overtly
coercive tactics will not be admissible in court
More subtle forms of coercion, such as
exaggerating evidence, are acceptable in
Canada (e.g., R v. Oickle, 2000)
Recent Changes to Interrogations

Videotaping
interrogations is becoming
more common
Benefits include:
Protects police against false
allegations of abuse
Protects citizens from police coercion
Allows courts to make informed
decisions
False Confessions
A false confession occurs when an individual
confesses to a crime they did not commit or
exaggerates their involvement in a crime they
did commit
Must be distinguished from a disputed and a
retracted confession
Three types of false confessions:
Voluntary
Coerced-compliant
Coerced-internalized
Voluntary False Confessions

A voluntary false confession occurs
without being prompted by the police
Can be the result of a desire for notoriety,
an inability to distinguish fact from
fantasy, an attempt to protect the real
offender, or a need to be punished
An example: The Lindbergh case
Coerced-Compliant False
Confessions
A coerced-compliant false confession
occurs in response to a desire to escape
further interrogation or to gain a promised
reward
The confessor knows that they did not
commit the crime
An example: Gerry Conlon and the IRA
bombings
Coerced-Internalized False
Confession
A coerced-internalized false confession
results from highly suggestive interrogations
The confessor comes to believe that they did
commit the crime (i.e., internalizes)
Some people, such as those with learning
disabilities, are more susceptible to this type
of confession (Gudjonsson, 1992)
An example: The Paul Ingram case
Compliance and Suggestibility
Two psychological constructs are important

in understanding false confessions:
Compliance: Tendency to go along
with people in authority (related to
coerced-compliant confessions)
Suggestibility: Tendency to internalize
information communicated during
questioning (related to coercedinternalized confessions)
False Confessions in the Laboratory

The famous computer key study by Kassin &
Kiechel (1996)
A situation was set up where participants were
accused of committing a crime
Suspects vulnerability was manipulated as was
the presence of false evidence
Percentage of false confessions were recorded
under various conditions
(continued)
False Confessions in the Laboratory

(Table 3.1; Kassin & Kiechel, 1996)
(continued)
No False Evidence
False Evidence
Fast
Pace
Slow
Pace
Fast
Pace
Slow
Pace
Compliance
Internalization
35%
0
65%
12%
89%
44%
100%
65%
Confabulation
6%
35%
Criminal Profiling
Criminal profiling is a technique for
identifying the personality and
behavioural features of an offender based
on an analysis of the crimes they have
committed
Most frequently used in homicide and rape
cases
History of Criminal Profiling

Late 1800s: The Jack the Ripper
investigation
1950s: The New York Mad Bomber
1970s: Criminal profiling program
developed at the F.B.I.
Today: Similar programs have been
developed internationally (e.g., the
RCMPs Behavioural Science Section)
The Purposes of Profiling

Suspect prioritization
New lines of inquiry
Flush out offender
Develop interview strategies
Offer cross-examination strategies to
prosecution
Approaches to Profiling
In general, there are two approaches to

profiling:
Deductive profiling: Profiling an
offender from evidence relating to that
offenders crimes
Inductive profiling: Profiling an
offender from what is known about
other offenders who have committed
similar (solved) crimes
Organized-Disorganized Model
The FBI use an inductive approach to profiling

known as the organized-disorganized model
(Hazelwood & Douglas, 1980)
(continued)
Organized-Disorganized Model
(continued)
Crime scenes categorized as organized

(methodical) or disorganized (chaotic)
Background characteristics categorized as
organized (high functioning) or
disorganized (low functioning)
Organized crimes are assumed to have been
committed by organized offenders and
disorganized crimes are assumed to have
been committed by disorganized offenders
Organized-Disorganized Model:
Problems
Little research has examined the model, but
that which has been conducted raises serious
doubts (Canter et al., 2004)
Cannot account for offenders who display a
mix of organized and disorganized features
(Douglas et al., 1992)
The Value of Profiling

Surveys of police officers indicate profiling is
useful in investigations (Copson, 1995)
Benefits of profiles include:
Provide a greater understanding of the
case (60.9%)
Reinforce judgements about the offender
(51.6%)
Only 2.6% of respondents indicated that
profiles led to the identification of the offender
Potential Problems with Profiling

Many forms of profiling are based on a model
of personality (the classic trait model) that
lacks empirical support (Alison et al., 2002)
Profiles often contain ambiguous advice and
such advice can be interpreted to fit a wide
range of suspects (Alison et al., 2003)
Professional profilers do not always produce
profiles that are more accurate than the profiles
produced by novices (Kocsis et al., 2000)
Other Types of Profiling
The police also use two other types of

profiling:
Geographic profiling
Racial profiling
Geographic Profiling
Geographic profiling involves an
analysis of crime scene locations in order
to determine the most probable area of
offender residence
Assumes that offenders do not travel long
distances from home to commit the
majority of their crimes
In many cases geographic profiles can be
quite accurate (Rossmo, 2000)
Geographic Profiling Systems

Systems that use mathematical models to
assign probability values to areas surrounding
linked crimes that correspond to the
likelihood that the offender resides in those
areas
Teaching individuals simple heuristics can
produce results equivalent in accuracy to
those produced by computer systems (Snook
et al., 2004)
Racial Profiling
Racial profiling refers to any police
initiated action that uses race to make
decisions regarding an individual
One common form of racial profiling is
stopping and searching vehicles when it is
believed that a persons race does not
match the type of car driven
Empirical research does not support the
use of racial profiling (Lamberth, 1999)

The Psychology of Police Investigations

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The Psychology of Police Investigations

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Chapter 3

There are two goals of a police

The Coercive Nature of Police

History of coercive measures:

The Reid Model of Interrogation

The Reid Model of Interrogation

The third stage involves 9 steps that are used

The Reid Model of Interrogation

Interrupting any statements of

In general, interrogations techniques can

Problems with the Reid Model of

The Admissibility of Confessions

Recent Changes to Interrogations

Voluntary False Confessions

An example: The Lindbergh case

Compliance and Suggestibility

Two psychological constructs are important

False Confessions in the Laboratory

False Confessions in the Laboratory

History of Criminal Profiling

The Purposes of Profiling

In general, there are two approaches to

The FBI use an inductive approach to profiling

Crime scenes categorized as organized

The Value of Profiling

Potential Problems with Profiling

Other Types of Profiling

The police also use two other types of

Geographic Profiling Systems

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