An analysis of how the police ‘caution’ is presented to juvenile suspects in England

In England and Wales, suspects must be given a police caution before they are questioned. The purpose of the caution is to explain a suspect's right to silence as a protection against self-incrimination. However, the evidence on whether the caution fulfils its purpose is limited. The aim of the present study was to describe how cautions were delivered in interviews with juvenile suspects in England. First, the study set out to describe how the caution was delivered to suspects during actual police interviews. Second, the study examined whether suspects claimed or demonstrated understanding of the caution. Third, the study analysed how the caution was explained by police officers. In total, the study examined 38 cautions from 31 interviews. The results indicated that police officers delivered the caution at a speed that is likely to be too fast for juvenile suspects to comprehend. Juvenile suspects often claimed to understand the caution, but when asked, failed to demonstrate comprehension. On the other hand, police officers often explained the caution to juvenile suspects, but not always correctly. Both suspects’ and police officers’ explanations of the caution revealed several misconceptions. The results suggest that the caution may not safeguard suspects as intended.     

When Both Sides are Mistaken: Layperson and Legal Professionals’ Misconceptions of Canadian Suspects’ Legal Rights Upon Arrest

Canadian criminal suspects have notably limited access to legal counsel upon arrest compared to suspects in the U.S. Additionally, prior research has shown significant misunderstanding of police warnings informing suspects of their rights upon arrest. This paper presents three studies on Canadians’ comprehension of criminal suspects’ rights upon arrest, with a focus on the right to counsel. Study 1 (N=80) and Study 2 (N=377) examined Canadian layperson’s comprehension, knowledge, and perceptions of legal rights upon arrest. In turn, Study 3 (N=78) investigated Canadian legal professionals’ perceptions of laypersons’ knowledge of those rights. Results from these three studies indicated there is substantial confusion about the right to counsel for Canadian criminal suspects. These results also support previous research demonstrating problems with comprehension of Canadian police cautions. Taken together, the findings of the present research pose significant concern for an increased risk of false confessions from Canadian suspects who enter an interrogation with limited knowledge and understanding of their legal right to counsel.     

Improving the Comprehensibility of a Canadian Police Caution on the Right to Silence

Modifications to a Canadian police caution on the right to silence were made in an attempt to increase its comprehensibility. University participants were asked to imagine themselves in an arrest and interrogation situation in which they were either innocent or guilty. It was hypothesized that participants who received the modified caution would score significantly higher on measures of comprehension than those who received the standard caution. Results indicated that comprehension was significantly higher among those that received the modified caution and that those with higher comprehension scores were more likely to exercise their right to silence. These findings suggest that clarifying and standardizing how a detainee’s rights are communicated will lead to better comprehension and greater protection against false or coerced confessions.     

Does providing a written version of the police caution improve comprehension in the general population?

Abstract

Comprehension of the police caution is extremely poor across a variety of populations and jurisdictions and is particularly impaired in vulnerable populations. This has significant consequences for the admissibility of evidence in court. We investigated whether providing individuals with a written version of the caution would improve comprehension in the general population. Sixty participants (30 with low educational attainment and 30 with high educational attainment) were randomly allocated to one of three groups (Verbal presentation; Written presentation; Verbal and Written presentation). Comprehension in the three groups was evaluated using Cooke and Philip's (1998) Scottish Comprehension of Caution Instrument. Results showed that despite 95% of participants claiming to fully understand the sample caution, only 5% of individuals in the verbal presentation group demonstrated full understanding, compared to 40% and 35% in the written and combined verbal and written groups respectively. This highlights both that individuals' self-reports of understanding are higher than actual comprehension and that providing a written version of the caution may improve comprehension in the general population.     

Order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation No. 1166 of December 31, 2012, Moscow, "Questions of Organization of the Work of Precinct Police Plenipotentiaries"

Order No. 1166 defines the responsibilities of precinct police plenipotentiaries and contains Instructions for Organization of the Work of Precinct Police Plenipotentiaries.     

Design of an algorithm to identify persons with mental illness in a police administrative database

North American police maintain a database to track events and information related to their involvement with the public that contain a series of electronic caution/dependency flags attached to an individual's name for internal communication. To identify persons with mental illness in a police administrative database, an algorithm was developed that was composed of (a) caution/dependency flags, (b) addresses, and (c) key search words indicative of mental illness. Based on the level of confidence of the algorithm, persons with mental illness (PMI) were then assigned to one of three categories: Definite, Probable and Possible PMI. Results for 2000 include the sociodemographic characteristics of PMI and non-PMI in the database. The mean number of contacts, types of interactions, re-involvement with a year, charges and dispositions are described. The algorithm provides a cheap, quick method to identify PMI for North American police. It enables police to monitor the effectiveness of pre-arrest diversion programs and allows researchers to analyze questions of criminalization and mental illness.     

Incident perception by British police officers

This study compared the perceptions of a group of experienced British police officers with those of a group of young British police officers and of a group of British civilians. Subjects were shown a videotape of an urban street corner scene which contained a number of staged incidents including criminal offenses, suspicious circumstances, and traffic offenses. They were asked to note down all the incidents which they perceived during the viewing of the videotape, No significant differences were found between the three groups in the total number of incidents identified. There was, however, a significant subject group by offense type interaction, with inexperienced police officers showing the highest reporting of traffic offenses and experienced police officers the lowest. In each group there was also an inverse relationship between the number of traffic offenses and criminal offenses/suspicious circumstances noted. This was particularly high in the inexperienced police officer group.     

Encouraging eyewitnesses to falsely corroborate allegations: effects of rapport-building and incriminating evidence

Building rapport involves developing a harmonious relationship with another person and conveying understanding and acceptance towards that person. Law enforcement officers use rapport-building to help gather information from witnesses. But could rapport-building, in some situations, work to contaminate eyewitness testimony? Research shows that compelling incriminating evidence can lead people to corroborate false accusations made against another person. We investigated whether rapport-building – when combined with either Verbal or Verbal+Visual false evidence – might boost these corroboration rates. Subjects took part in a pseudo-gambling task, in which their counterpart was falsely accused of cheating. Using a 2 (Rapport: Rapport vs. No-rapport) × 2 (Incriminating Evidence: Verbal vs. Verbal+Visual) between-subjects design, we persuaded subjects to corroborate the accusation. We found that both rapport and verbal+visual incriminating evidence increased the compliance rate. Even when the incriminating evidence was only presented verbally, rapport-building subjects were almost three times as likely to corroborate a false accusation compared to subjects who did not undergo rapport-building. Our results suggest that although there is widespread and strong support for using rapport-building in interviews, doing so also has the potential to aggravate the contaminating power of suggestive interview techniques.     

Conditions for gender equality in police leadership – making way for senior police women

This paper aims to analyse and discuss conditions for gender equality in police leadership. This is done by interviewing 28 sworn police leaders in Sweden, and using a doing gender perspective for analyses. The results show that women and, to a greater extent, men in police leadership do gender traditionally. Explanations for the lack of female leaders and strategies for increasing the number of female leaders are shown to either focus on women as individuals (mostly men) or organisational structure and culture (mostly women). Further, strategies to reach gender equality goals are critically examined. These could be used to create concrete diversity and equality work within police and other organisations. Whether or not quantitative gender equality work (raising the number of females in leadership positions) can create changes in qualitative gender equality (the learning of new norms to change experiences of inclusion and exclusion in relation to gender) is discussed.     

Cues to Deception and Ability to Detect Lies as a Function of Police Interview Styles

In Experiment 1, we examined whether three interview styles used by the police, accusatory, information-gathering and behaviour analysis, reveal verbal cues to deceit, measured with the Criteria-Based Content Analysis (CBCA) and Reality Monitoring (RM) methods. A total of 120 mock suspects told the truth or lied about a staged event and were interviewed by a police officer employing one of these three interview styles. The results showed that accusatory interviews, which typically result in suspects making short denials, contained the fewest verbal cues to deceit. Moreover, RM distinguished between truth tellers and liars better than CBCA. Finally, manual RM coding resulted in more verbal cues to deception than automatic coding of the RM criteria utilising the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software programme.In Experiment 2, we examined the effects of the three police interview styles on the ability to detect deception. Sixty-eight police officers watched some of the videotaped interviews of Experiment 1 and made veracity and confidence judgements. Accuracy scores did not differ between the three interview styles; however, watching accusatory interviews resulted in more false accusations (accusing truth tellers of lying) than watching information-gathering interviews. Furthermore, only in accusatory interviews, judgements of mendacity were associated with higher confidence. We discuss the possible danger of conducting accusatory interviews.     

An examination of the questioning styles of police officers and caregivers when interviewing children with intellectual disabilities

Purpose. This research provided a detailed analysis of the types of questions and verbal strategies used by police officers and caregivers when interviewing children with intellectual disabilities about events. Method. Twenty eight children aged 9 to 13 years with a mild or moderate intellectual disability participated in a staged event at their school. Each child was then interviewed on separate occasions by the child's primary caregiver and by a police officer who was authorized to conduct investigative interviews with children. Results. While the approach used by the police officers was broadly consistent with best‐practice recommendations (i.e. their interviews contained few leading, coercive or negative strategies), they frequently interrupted the child's account and used relatively few minimal encouragers and other strategies designed to keep the child talking. The caregivers used a high proportion of direct, leading and coercive strategies to elicit information from their children. Even when caregivers used open‐ended questions, their children provided less event‐related information than they did to the police interviewers. Conclusion. The quality of evidence obtained from children with intellectual disabilities is likely to be dependent (albeit in part) on the degree to which police interviewers adhere to best‐practice guidelines, as well as the children's general experience with an open‐ended style of communication.     

Attitudes toward Wife Abuse of Police Officers and Judiciary Members in Turkey: Profession,Gender, Ambivalent Sexism and Sex Roles

This study examined the attitudes of police officers and judiciary members toward wife abuse in Turkey and the relation between these attitudes and profession, ambivalent sexism (hostile/benevolent sexism), gender, and gender roles. The following instruments were used for the analyses: The Attitudes Toward Wife Abuse Scale (AWAS), the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI), and the Bem Sex Role Inventory. The participants were 300 police officers and 150 judiciary members selected from different regions of Turkey. Results showed that compared to judiciary members, police officers are more tolerant of physical and verbal abuse of women in marriage, but less tolerant of the idea of the victim leaving an abusive marriage partner. Similarly, men were more tolerant than women of those husbands who physically and verbally abuse their wives, but less supportive of the wife leaving the abusive partner. Profession and ambivalent sexism (hostile/benevolent sexism) were found to be the strongest predictors of attitudes toward wife abuse.     

An empirical assessment of content in criminal psychological profiles

Although criminal psychological profiling has been in use by law enforcement agencies for almost three decades, there is a paucity of empirical research examining the technique. A fundamental issue that has received little attention is the empirical evaluation of information contained in profiles composed by professional profilers. In this study, a group of profilers, police officers, psychologists, college students, and self-declared psychics were given information from a solved murder investigation, after which the participants composed a written profile predicting the probable offender. Professional profilers tended to write more lengthy profiles that contained more information about the nonphysical attributes of the offender and more information about the crime scene or the offender's behavior before, during, and after the crime. These results are discussed in terms of their implication for our broader understanding of the technique of profiling and future directions for research into profiling.     

Rorschach-in-Action: Some Further Observations on the Semiotic Summons in Police-Citizen Encounters

The police are one of the mostauthoritative and visible agents of thecriminal law; yet, they have often beenconceptualized in an ``unofficial' way, aspseudo-parental figures, counselors, andmediators – and as inkblots that evoke a widerange of reactions from citizens, from anxietyand rage to fear. Explanations for these typesof reactions have been overly impressionistic,speculative, and psychological. In this note, Iconsider the notion of the police as``Rorschach-in-uniform.' By using data fromroutine traffic stops, I demonstrate how thesummons/answer sequence that is commonly foundin social and bureaucratic encounters isreduced and adapted to meet the situationalrelevancies of police work. I argue that it isthrough the semiotic summons that the Rorschachis given a practical embodiment.     

Examining the Role of Interrogative Suggestibility in Miranda Rights Comprehension in Adolescents

This study aimed to further clarify the association between interrogative suggestibility and Miranda rights comprehension in adolescents; in particular, we examined whether intellectual ability (IQ) serves as a mediator of this relationship. Participants completed Grisso’s Miranda Instruments, the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence, and the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale. Many youth demonstrated poor comprehension of their rights, particularly younger and less intellectually capable adolescents. Both yield and shift components of interrogative suggestibility were inversely related to rights comprehension; however, IQ fully mediated these relationships. Neither demographic variables (gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status after controlling for IQ, and English as a second language (ESL) status) nor previous police experience were significantly associated with rights comprehension in the present sample. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Testing the impact of group offending on behavioural similarity in serial robbery

Behavioural case linkage assumes that offenders behave in a similar way across their crimes. However, group offending could impact on behavioural similarity. This study uses robbery data from two police forces to test this by comparing the behavioural similarity of pairs of lone offences (LL), pairs of group offences (GG) and pairs of offences where one crime was committed alone and the other in a group (GL). Behavioural similarity was measured using Jaccard's coefficients. Kruskal–Wallis tests were used to examine differences between the three categories within the linked samples. No statistically significant differences were found for linked GG compared to linked LL pairs. However, differences emerged between GL and the other categories for some behaviours (especially control) suggesting caution should be applied when linking group and lone offences committed by the same perpetrator. Differences between linked and unlinked pairs were assessed using receiver operating characteristic. The results suggest it is possible to distinguish between linked and unlinked pairs based on behaviour especially within the GG and LL categories. There were, however, fewer significant findings for the GL sample, suggesting there may be issues linking crimes where the offender commits one crime as part of a group and the other alone.     

Dangers of police professionalization: An empirical analysis

This study examines relationships between professionalization (measured by the amount of college education and police training) and police officer attitudes. Using data from a survey of 712 police officers in twenty-nine departments in the St. Louis area, the analysis focuses on propositions derived from scholars who have identified harmful effects they expect to flow from the reform. Although the limited operational definition of the key variables and other factors noted in the study require caution in interpreting the findings, little evidence in support of the expected “dangers” is found. This result, in combination with other studies that have failed to find support for the case made for raising the educational level of police, suggests the need to reassess expectations about the impact of college education in policing.     

The importance of a urine sample in persons intoxicated with flunitrazepam--legal issues in a forensic psychiatric case study of a serial murderer

The sedative-hypnotic benzodiazepine flunitrazepam (FZ) is abused worldwide. The purpose of our study was to investigate violence and anterograde amnesia following intoxication with FZ, and how this was legally evaluated in forensic psychiatric investigations with the objective of drawing some conclusions about the importance of urine sample in a case of a suspected intoxication with FZ. The case was a 23-year-old male university student who, intoxicated with FZ (and possibly with other substances such as diazepam, amphetamines or cannabis), first stabbed an acquaintance and, 2 years later, two friends to death. The police investigation files, including video-typed interviews, the forensic psychiatric files, and also results from the forensic autopsy of the victims, were compared with the information obtained from the case. Only partial recovery from anterograde amnesia was shown during a period of several months. Some important new information is contained in this case report: a forensic analysis of blood sample instead of a urine sample, might lead to confusion during police investigation and forensic psychiatric assessment (FPA) of an FZ abuser, and in consequence wrong legal decisions. FZ, alone or combined with other substances, induces severe violence and is followed by anterograde amnesia. All cases of bizarre, unexpected aggression followed by anterograde amnesia should be assessed for abuse of FZ. A urine sample is needed in case of suspected FZ intoxication. The police need to be more aware of these issues, and they must recognise that they play a crucial role in an assessment procedure. Declaring FZ an illegal drug is strongly recommended.     

Police patrol and the deterrence of crime

A nonrecursive model of the deterrent effect of police presence was formulated and tested for 26 cities. Victimization data were employed as measures of crime, unpublished FBI data on the number of police patrol units as the measure of levels of police presence, and data for 11 exogenous variables were derived from FBI and census reports. It was found that per capita, police are a positive function of rates of violent crime and that clearance rates are a positive function of police presence. However, some offenses that have traditionally been thought to be deterrable are not inversely related to clearance rates. The equations were re-estimated using official measures of crime and found to be more consistent with the deterrent hypothesis. It is suggested that official data may generate a spurious correlation. Finally, caution is suggested in consideration of alternative forms of police presence.     

Context matters: Alibi strength varies according to evaluator perspective

Purpose . The nascent field of alibi evaluation research has produced interesting and inconsistent findings. We focus on a heretofore unexamined variable that may play a critical role in alibi evaluation: context. Specifically, two experiments tested the hypothesis that the same alibi can be evaluated differently when presented in the context of a police investigation vs. criminal trial. Method . In Study 1, 101 college participants evaluated an alibi in one of three contexts: police investigation, criminal trial, or a control condition devoid of specific legal context. Dependent measures included ratings of alibi strength and credibility, as well as the likelihood that the suspect was guilty. In Study 2, both context and the presence of a corroborating witness were varied in a scenario presented to 139 college participants. Results . Across studies, an alibi was rated as stronger in the police investigation vs. trial context, consistent with the prediction that the fact that a case has proceeded to trial implies to perceivers that the alibi is relatively weak. In Study 2, an alibi was deemed stronger when corroborated vs. uncorroborated, but this difference was only significant in the police investigation context. Conclusions . If alibi research is to fulfil its promise for legal and policy implications, a clearer understanding of the variables that influence alibi evaluation must be developed. The present results illustrate the importance of context in this investigation, suggesting that two researchers studying evaluations of the same alibi may arrive at different conclusions based on the simple framing of the experimental task.