Police-Induced Confessions,Risk Factors,and Recommendations: Looking Ahead

Reviewing the literature on police-induced confessions, we identified suspect characteristics and interrogation tactics that influence confessions and their effects on juries. We concluded with a call for the mandatory electronic recording of interrogations and a consideration of other possible reforms. The preceding commentaries make important substantive points that can lead us forward—on the effects of videotaping of interrogations on case dispositions; on the study of non-custodial methods, such as the controversial Mr. Big technique; and on an analysis of why confessions, once withdrawn, elicit such intractable responses compared to statements given by child and adult victims. Toward these ends, we hope that this issue provides a platform for future research aimed at improving the diagnostic value of confession evidence.     

Japanese Suspect Interviews,Confessions, and Related Factors

Two hundred and ninety-one new adult male inmates convicted of murder, robbery, arson, rape, forcible indecency, and kidnapping completed questionnaires about their pretrial interviews. Logistic regression analyses revealed that marital status, feelings of guilt, and perceptions of the strength of the evidence significantly affected the likelihood of confession by those who had already decided to confess prior to interview. By contrast, prior arrest history and interview style affected the likelihood of confession by those who had not previously decided to confess. Suspects who had no previous arrests and had undergone either Undifferentiated-high or Relationship-focused interviews were more likely to make full confessions. In Undifferentiated-high interviews, police officers employed all of the interviewing techniques examined: they listened closely to the suspects’ accounts, attempted to build good relationships, and discussed the crimes, while also presenting evidence and confronting the suspects. In Relationship-focused interviews, police officers listened attentively to the offenders’ accounts, tried to build good relationships, and discussed the crimes directly. Prisoners who experienced Relationship-focused interviews felt satisfied with their confessions and admitted guilt at trial.     

重复供述排除问题研究

一次非法取供,是否要对重复供述一排到底?重复供述问题在我国尤为突出,然而,法律和司法解释中并未明确重复供述的可采性。重复供述排除与否取决于先前的非法取供手段对重复供述的实际影响。基于我国实际,应当实行重复供述的分阶段排除方式,即原则上只排除非法取供发生后至确认前在同一诉讼阶段获取的重复供述。为了克服排除重复供述的障碍,应当允许重复取供,理顺公、检、法的关系,减少三机关的同质性。当然,最根本的举措是要建立激励为主的取供机制,调整形式主义的口供运用模式,怯除对非自愿供述的依赖。     

Videotaped Confessions: Panacea or Pandora's Box?

Videotape is becoming an increasingly common means of recording and presenting confessions that are obtained during custodial interrogations. Many scientific, legal, and political experts view this procedural advance as a solution to the growing problem of some innocent people being induced to incriminate themselves when confronted by standard police interrogation tactics. We review a program of research that indicates, however, that the indiscriminate application of videotaping to solve the problem of coerced or false confessions slipping through the system could ironically exacerbate the situation.     

Confessions in the Criminal Process

This article undertakes a theoretical exploration of the roles that confessions can play in the criminal process and of the importance that is placed on their voluntariness. It draws on contemporary and historical sources, as well as materials from different legal systems and traditions. Three possible perspectives on the topic are identified: the moral, the epistemic and the political. Adopting each of these perspectives in turn, I set out three distinct dimensions of confessions in the criminal process. In my account of each dimension, voluntariness is construed in the light of a particular understanding of confessions that is conceptually tied to a particular understanding of the criminal process. The conclusion remarks on the interplay of the three dimensions.     

Confessions and Criminal Case Disposition in China

This research examines confessions and criminal case disposition in China. It describes how wider economic reforms in China and subsequent changes in its legal system may have affected the nature and consequence of criminal confessions. Bivariate and multivariate analyses of a sample of 1,009 criminal court cases reveal that the majority of offenders confessed to their crime and that confession is associated with less severe punishments (e.g., lower risks for imprisonment, shorter sentences). Changes in the nature of confession and its impact on criminal court practices are also examined before and after legal reforms in the mid-1990s. These context-specific findings are then discussed in terms of their implications for understanding the interrelationships between legal structure, legal culture, and case disposition in communitarian-based societies.     

Interrogative Specialists and False Confessions: Debunking the Con Artist Myth

Within the criminal justice system, confessions are an extremely powerful form of evidence. Unfortunately, innocent people sometimes falsely confess to crimes they did not actually commit. Such travesties of justice have sparked a significant degree of academic research into the false confession phenomenon. Within the existing literature, there exists a conceptual framework that the interrogative methods and actions of law enforcement officers are a key cause of false confessions with some researchers going so far as to suggest that law enforcement interrogators act as confidence men who trick criminal subjects into confessing. However, few researchers have actually questioned law enforcement officers about false confessions and even fewer have consulted with officers who specialize in interrogation. This study is a subset of a larger qualitative case study designed to explore the experiences of 13 federal law enforcement polygraph examiners who specialize in interrogation regarding their approach to criminal interrogation and their experiences with both true and false confessions. This study focused on the personal processes federal law enforcement polygraph examiners use in reviewing Miranda rights and documenting confessions. NVivo software was used to organize the data. Common themes in interview responses were then identified and revealed that participants employ an open, detailed, and straightforward approach in reviewing Miranda rights and documenting the confessions of criminal subjects. These findings contradict the premise that law enforcement interrogators inherently operate as confidence men by tricking and manipulating criminal subjects.     

Protective Orders and Domestic Violence: Risk Factors for Re-Abuse

One of the few legal tools for protecting victims of domestic violence is the civil Protection Order (PO). How effective they were in preventing re-abuse was analyzed by examining court and police records from 210 couples in which female victims (or applicants) filed POs against their violent partners. Police records for 2 years prior and two years following the issuance of a PO were reviewed. Results indicated a significant decline in the probability of abuse following a PO. Prior to filing a PO, 68% of the women reported physical violence. After filing, only 23% reported physical violence. Several risk factors were assessed and it was found that very low SES women were more likely to report re-abuse as were African-Americans.     

论自白补强证据规则

在我国,简易程序中的法庭上自白可以不需要补强,除此之外,其他一切刑事案件中的自白都需要补强;在对自白进行补强时,自白的补强证据只要能够保证自白的真实性即可,而不应当在补强的范围上作形式上的要求。自白的补强证据除了应当具备一般意义上的证据能力外,还必须独立于被补强的自白;在程度上,补强证据只要能与自白结合在一起使法官产生确信即可,而不需要达到能独立使法官产生确信的程度。另外,共犯自白在作为认定其他共犯犯罪的证据时同样需要补强证据;共犯自白可以作为其他共犯自白的补强证据。     

Resilience in Sexually Abused Women: Risk and Protective Factors

The goal of this study was to evaluate the contribution of family characteristics (family conflict and cohesion) and abuse characteristics (age at which abuse occurred, abuse severity, and relationship to perpetrator) to resilience (self-acceptance, ability to engage in positive relationships with others, and environmental mastery) in a sample of one hundred and 77 university women who had experienced childhood sexual abuse (CSA). The respondents completed a questionnaire that focused on childhood experiences including family environment in childhood, characteristics of the abuse they had experienced in addition to degree of current resilience defined as their level of well-being (self-acceptance, ability to engage in positive relationships with others, and environmental mastery). The results indicated that family characteristics accounted for 13–22% of the variance in the well-being outcomes. In contrast, abuse characteristics accounted for 3% or less of the variance in the well-being outcomes. The clinical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Confessions and denials and the relationship with personality

Purpose. The main aim of the study was to examine the reasons and personality factors associated with confessions and denials. It was hypothesized that antisocial personality traits and active involvement in criminal behaviour would distinguish true confessors and true deniers from false confessors and false deniers. Method. The participants were 1,080 students in further education in Iceland. Each was asked about false admissions made to teachers and parents in the past, as well as about confessions or denials (true and false) made to the police during questioning, and the reasons for having responded in the way they did. The participants also completed questionnaires relating to offending, personality and self‐esteem. Results. One‐quarter (25%) of the participants stated that they had in the past been interrogated by the police in relation to a suspected offence, of whom 59% said they had confessed. A small minority of those interrogated (3.7%; 1% of the total sample) claimed to have made false confessions to the police, whereas 10% claimed to have made false confessions to teachers or parents. Males were significantly more likely to report false confessions than females. False confessions and false denials were significantly associated with antisocial personality traits, with Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Psychoticism being the single best predictor. Those participants who made true confessions and true denials were most normal in their personality. Conclusions. Personality is a significant predictor of who makes false confessions and false denials.     

Inside Interrogation: The Lie,The Bluff,and False Confessions

Using a less deceptive variant of the false evidence ploy, interrogators often use the bluff tactic, whereby they pretend to have evidence to be tested without further claiming that it necessarily implicates the suspect. Three experiments were conducted to assess the impact of the bluff on confession rates. Using the Kassin and Kiechel (Psychol Sci 7:125–128, 1996) computer crash paradigm, Experiment 1 indicated that bluffing increases false confessions comparable to the effect produced by the presentation of false evidence. Experiment 2 replicated the bluff effect and provided self-reports indicating that innocent participants saw the bluff as a promise of future exoneration which, paradoxically, made it easier to confess. Using a variant of the Russano et al. (Psychol Sci 16:481–486, 2005) cheating paradigm, Experiment 3 replicated the bluff effect on innocent suspects once again, though a ceiling effect was obtained in the guilty condition. Results suggest that the phenomenology of innocence can lead innocents to confess even in response to relatively benign interrogation tactics.     

Risk Factors for Family Abduction: Demographic and Family Interaction Characteristics

Previous research in the study of family abduction has been plagued by three problems in efforts to establish risk factors for the experience of these events: (1) failure to use appropriate comparison groups; (2) focus on only the most severe cases of abduction, without consideration of the full spectrum of these events; and (3) use of data drawn only from some “reported” source (i.e., police, court, or missing children agency reports). This paper addresses these three methodological difficulties, using data drawn from a national sample of families, and including both abducted and nonabducted children. We find that race, age of children, family size, and incidence of violence in the family all appear to bear on the risk of experiencing a family abduction event. Further, recency of divorce or separation appears to be associated with the risk for more serious or alarming cases of family abduction.     

Risk Factors for Child-to-Parent Violence

One of the goals of the present work was to study the relationship between child-to-parent violence (CPV) and other types of intra-family violence such as inter-parental violence and parent-to-child violence, in order to verify which of these two types of domestic violence is a more relevant risk factor for CPV and to analyze the presence of gender differences in the bi-directionality of violence. Another purpose was to identify the psychological profile of perpetrators. The sample comprised 485 adolescents from the province of Gipuzkoa (Spain), of both sexes, taken from nine schools and aged 12 to 18. Parent-to-child violence and inter-parental violence were significant risk factors for CPV. Evidence was found in support of a social learning taking into account gender: boys were more likely to be physically aggressive toward the mother if she was also physically victimized by the father. Differences were found in the profiles of adolescents who behave violently toward their parents (inappropriate upbringing by mother, social maladjustment, and drug abuse) depending on gender.     

Re-Conceptualising the Policing of Hatred: Confessions and Worrying Dilemmas of a Consultant

Community Safety Units in the London Metropolitan Police handle over 9000 reported incidents of ‘hate’ crime each month. This paper explores the work of these Units through its conceptualisation of the notion of vulnerability. The workload of the CSUs includes domestic, racist and homophobic incidents. The victim/perpetrator relationship, it is assumed, provides special motivation for the offender's violence and requires police to consider special support for the victim. The paper begins with an exploration of how the MPS conceptualises ‘hate crime’. Its rationale for dedicated resources for the policing of particular forms of violence can be found, I suggest in the second part of the paper, in the way in which violence itself is conceptualised. I then offer a different term for thinking about hate crime – targeted violence. I go on to argue in depth how the(faulty) logic about violence obscures our ability to take people's ordinary experiences of intimidation, threat and bodily harm seriously in law and in society. The term ‘hate crime’, I conclude, in advertently reinforces this (faulty) logic. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Food,Meaning, and the Law: Confessions of a Vegan Semiotician

The essay that follows combines several genres along an unconventional path. It departs from the psycho-semiotic analysis of a personal turning point: the author’s ‘conversion’ to veganism. After exposing the rationale for this change in semiotic terms, however, the essay extends its theorization to the social level, inquiring about the intersection between vegan conviction and commensality. In a world where different food ideologies co-occur, converge, conflict, and sometimes clash, what is the role of the law in establishing value priorities and strike a balance among different sociocultural and political trends? The essay concludes with a synthetic definition, in semiotic terms, of the perspective on food, meaning, and law promoted by the author: a vegan liberalism that is tolerant of food pluralism but simultaneously militates for the evolution of culture and society toward the accomplishment of a utopia, that of a world immune from the exploitation of animal suffering.     

Snitching,Lies and Computer Crashes: An Experimental Investigation of Secondary Confessions

Two laboratory studies with 332 student participants investigated secondary confessions (provided by an informant instead of the suspect). Participants allegedly caused or witnessed a simulated computer crash, then were asked to give primary or secondary confessions during interrogation. Study 1 replicated the false evidence effect for primary confessions. Secondary confessions were obtained at a high rate, which was increased by false evidence in combination with incentive to confess. In Study 2 a confederate either confessed to or denied crashing the computer. Incentive increased the rate of secondary confession only in the presence of a denial; that is, incentive increased the number of false secondary confessions only. Implications for the use of incentives during informant interrogation are discussed.