The role of confirmation bias in suspect interviews: A systematic evaluation

Purpose. The three studies presented in this paper systematically examined the effect of expectations of guilt on interviewer questioning style, confession, denial rates, and suspects' verbal behaviour during interview. Method. Undergraduate students were recruited to participate in the three studies. In Study 1, 61 participants formulated questions that they wanted to ask a suspect to determine whether or not they cheated on a task. Prior to formulating their questions, participants were led to believe that the suspect was likely to be guilty or innocent. In Study 2, 45 ‘innocent’ and ‘guilty’ participants were accused of cheating on a task and were interviewed with either guilt‐presumptive questions or neutral questions. In the final study, 58 participants listened to a selection of audiotaped interviews from Study 2. They then rated various aspects of the suspects' verbal behaviour. Results. As hypothesized expectations of guilt resulted in the formulation of more guilt‐presumptive questions even when participants were free to generate their own questions (Study 1). A significant association was found between suspect guilt/innocence and whether they confessed or denied, although there was no association between questioning style and confession or denial rates (Study 2). However, as expected, ratings of independent observers who listened to tape recordings of the suspect interviews indicated an influence of questioning style on the suspects' verbal behaviour whereby a self‐fulfilling prophecy effect occurred (Study 3). Conclusions. These results indicate that expectations of guilt can indeed have an effect on questioning style and that this in‐turn can lead to a self‐fulfilling prophecy effect.     

Forensic Interviews with Children in Scotland: A Survey of Interview Practices Among Police

The present study surveyed 91 police interviewers in Scottish police forces about their perceptions of how well they adhered to the Scottish Executive (2003) guidelines. Almost all respondents (97%) received the appropriate national training and overwhelmingly indicated (again 97%) that their training equipped them either quite, very, or extremely well for conducting their interviews. Not surprisingly, therefore, most interviewers (88%) believed that their interviews allowed them to obtain full and complete accounts of the events being investigated. However, aside from this positive self evaluation there are reasons to be concerned about some aspects of the interviews being conducted; 1) Most interviewers (78%) received no refresher training, 2) no interviewers received formal feedback about the quality of interviews that they conducted, 3) practice interviews were reportedly not included in most interviews, 4) the use of open-ended prompts were not widely used with 20% of interviewers indicating that they were rarely used, and 5) interviews are not currently being electronically recorded. These results are discussed with respect to the context of child interviewing in Scotland and recommendations for future training.     

A Third Verdict Option: Exploring the Impact of the Not Proven Verdict on Mock Juror Decision Making

In most adversarial systems, jurors in criminal cases consider the binary verdict alternatives of "Guilty" and "Not guilty." However, in some circumstances and jurisdictions, a third verdict option is available: Not Proven. The Not Proven verdict essentially reflects the view that the defendant is indeed culpable, but that the prosecution has not proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt. Like a Not Guilty verdict, the Not Proven verdict results in an acquittal. The main aim of the two studies reported here was to determine how, and under what circumstances, jurors opt to use the Not Proven verdict across different case types and when the strength of the evidence varies. In both studies, jurors were more likely to choose a Not Proven verdict over a Not Guilty verdict when the alternative was available. When evidence against the defendant was only moderately strong and a Not Proven verdict option was available (Study 2), there was also a significant reduction in the conviction rate. Results also showed that understanding of the Not Proven verdict was poor, highlighting inadequacies in the nature of judicial instructions relating to this verdict.     

Predictors of eyewitness identification decisions from video lineups in England: A field study

Eyewitness identification decisions from 1,039 real lineups in England were analysed. Identification procedures have undergone dramatic change in the United Kingdom over recent years. Video lineups are now standard procedure, in which each lineup member is seen sequentially. The whole lineup is seen twice before the witness can make a decision, and the witness can request additional viewings of the lineup. A key aim of this paper was to investigate the association between repeated viewing and eyewitness decisions. Repeated viewing was strongly associated with increased filler identification rates, suggesting that witnesses who requested additional viewings were more willing to guess. In addition, several other factors were associated with lineup outcomes, including the age difference between the suspect and the witness, the type of crime committed, and delay. Overall, the suspect identification rate was 39%, the filler identification rate was 26% and the lineup rejection rate was 35%. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

feminist ‘selves’ and feminism's ‘others’: feminist representations of Jamaat-e-Islami women in Pakistan

In Pakistan, as in many other societies, politico-religious movements or so-called Islamist fundamentalist movements are becoming an important site for women's activism as well as the harnessing of such activism to promote agendas that seem to undermine women's autonomy. This has become a concern for a growing feminist literature which from a variety of political and theoretical positions seeks to understand and explain the subject-position of Muslim women as politico-religious activists. This paper attempts a deconstructive reading of texts by leading Pakistani feminist scholars as they attempt the difficult process of steering between fundamentalism and Orientalism in their accounts of ‘fundamentalist’ women in the political ideological space of Pakistan.     

gendered Islam and modernity in the nation-space: women's modernism in the Jamaat-e-Islami of Pakistan

Feminist scholarship on women in religious and right-wing social and political movements has moved from a reductive focus on causal or motivational factors to more sophisticated analyses explicating processes of agency and subject formation. With the aim of expanding and deepening this conceptual space, I will discuss some of my interactions with a group of women in the Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan, as we attempted to explore the complex meanings of ‘the modern’ that informed the self-understanding of my interviewees. My work corroborates some of the contemporary scholarship on what is referred to as Political Islam in arguing that Islamist movements in Muslim societies are also the catalysts of modernization, rather than simply its interlocutors. This article argues that these processes of social and political organizing entail particular interrogations and the reconstituting of identities in ways that blur the line between ‘the religious’ and ‘the secular’. On the one hand, we need to understand Jamaat women's self-construction as religious or pious women; on the other hand, we must grasp the specificity of their claims to act as modern subjects situated in the time of political and cultural modernity.