Police Interviewing of Criminal Suspects: a Historical Perspective

This paper provides an historical overview of the development of police suspect interviewing. The paper highlights how different approaches developed based upon the prevailing needs of the time, from early approaches involving torture and threats, simple question and answer approaches, through to methods incorporating knowledge from the behavioural sciences such as persuasive interviewing. The paper highlights some of the problems associated with these approaches in particular risks of unreliable information and potential miscarriages of justice and discusses more recent ethically oriented interview approaches developed to minimise some of these risks. The paper stresses the importance of sensitivity to the rights and needs of suspects even when carrying out interviews under pressured conditions. 1 Centre for Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia Internet Journal of Criminology © 2012 ISSN 2045-6743 (Online) www.internetjournalofcriminology.com 2 Introduction The interview is one of the primary methods used by police to obtain information from witnesses, victims and suspects of crime and plays a significant role in the majority of police investigations. The witness interview may give police new information about a crime such as a description of an offender, an account of events or useful background information. The suspect interview may allow the police to ascertain an individual’s level of involvement in an offence, implicate others or may help exonerate the suspect. The interview is however not without its risks, some interview practices can lead to investigators obtaining poor, misleading and unreliable information that can in extremis lead to a miscarriage of justice (Gudjonsson, 2003). There has been recent debate on the processes involved in police interviewing and interrogation especially as regards terrorist suspects. Concerns have been raised about the use of torture and other robust interrogative procedures, the reliability of the information obtained and the impact upon individuals (Gudjonsson, 2003; Roberts, 2011; Sands, 2008). Critics claim that these approaches fly in the face of ‘best practice’ standards of interviewing and argue for a return to ethical interview approaches (Roberts, 2011; Sands, 2008). It is perhaps timely therefore to explore the development of police suspect interviewing to highlight how and why ethical approaches to interviewing arose and to remind ourselves why even in extreme situations such as terrorism they represent best practice. This paper therefore explores police interviewing of suspects from an historical perspective illustrating how police interviewing developed, the strengths and weaknesses of various interview approaches and the reasons behind them and attempts to reiterate what best practice means for police suspect interviews.