Urgent issues and prospects in reforming interrogation practices in the United States and Canada

The current article presents a series of commentaries on urgent issues and prospects in reforming interrogation practices in Canada and the United States. Researchers and practitioners, who have devoted much of their careers to the field of police and intelligence interrogations, were asked to provide their insights on an area of interrogation research that they believe requires immediate attention. The submitted independent commentaries covered a variety of topics – from police recruitment, interrogation training, use of proper interrogation practices, and the treatment of confession evidence in court. Common concerns from the contributions pertained to the lag between scientific knowledge on interrogations and the application of such knowledge in the justice system, and the glaring disparity between the treatment of similar issues in the interrogation context versus other criminal justice contexts. A primary intent of this collection of commentaries is to serve as a resource pointing researchers in the direction of the fundamental areas that require immediate consideration and encouraging them to simultaneously pursue solutions to the overarching concerns that emerged from this project.     

The effect of listenability factors on the comprehension of police cautions

We examined the extent to which modifying a police caution using three listenability factors (Instructions, Listing, and Explanations) improved comprehension. A 2 (Instructions vs. No Instructions) × 2 (Listing vs. No Listing) × 2 (Explanations vs. No Explanations) between-participants design was used. Participants (N = 160) were presented verbally with one of eight cautions and asked to record their understanding of the legal rights contained in the caution. Results showed a main effect of Explanations, thus suggesting that repeating the information contained in the caution in different terms increased comprehension. Partial support was also found for the hypothesized additive interactions of modifications, as the caution containing all three modifications resulted in the highest level of comprehension. The implications of these findings for the comprehension of police cautions, and verbally delivered information in general, are discussed.     

Publication and Research Trends in Police Psychology: A Review of Five Forensic Psychology Journals

Police psychology (PP) articles in five forensic psychology journals (Behavioral Sciences and the Law; Criminal Justice and Behavior; Law and Human Behavior; Legal and Criminological Psychology; Psychology, Crime, and Law) were identified in order to examine PP publication and research trends within the field of forensic psychology. A level of interest (LI) score was calculated by dividing the total number of pages dedicated to PP articles by the total number of journal pages. Article characteristics (e.g., research location, topic) were also coded. The overall LI-score across all journals was 0.13, with Legal and Criminological Psychology having the highest LI-score. Results also showed that interest in PP research is growing, particularly in Law and Human Behavior and Criminal Justice and Behavior. PP research has primarily been conducted in the United States, dedicated to operational issues, and experimental in nature. The alignment of these research trends with practice is discussed.