Police Confession Procedures May Lead To False Confessions - Study Addresses Psychological Elements, Incorrect Assumptions

Main Category: Psychology / Psychiatry
Article Date: 14 Jan 2007 - 17:00 PDT

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A new article examines problems regarding current police-confession procedures, focusing on an alarming occurrence of false confessions. The study appears in Psychological Science in the Public Interest.

  Extensive evidence suggests that police interrogators are poor lie detectors, often disbelieving innocent suspects, even when they have been trained to identify signs of guilt. "The assumption that 'I'd know a false confession if I saw one' is an unsubstantiated myth," says Saul M. Kassin, co-author of the study.

  Dispositions toward compliance and suggestibility, youth and psychopathology are predominant factors in false-confessions. Elements of interrogation that increase such confessions include isolation of the suspect and the presentation of false incriminating evidence. Suspects may internalize a belief in their own guilt when these procedures are used.

  "There is a need to reform interrogation practices which are found to increase the risk of false confessions. The recording of all interrogations would deter the most egregious police tactics and frivolous claims of coercion, as well as provide a complete and objective record of all interviews," says Kassin.

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