Literature review and intervention proposal for psychological treatment

A review of the literature unequivocally reveals false confessions are oftentimes deliberately sought after by overzealous criminal justice interrogators who are much more preoccupied with ascertaining a confession -- and an ensuing conviction -- than they are with ascertaining the truth about a particular crime.

This paper is organized by explaining the concept that false conceptions are deliberately extracted by far too many interrogators for the purposes of a conviction -- regardless if doing so is truthful or not. The author of this document explores this tenet from a variety of differing viewpoints which support it. However, there is a counterpoint to this thesis which is then elucidated. This counterpoint reveals that there are certain circumstances in which law enforcement have taken active measures to determine the truth without the presupposition of guilt or the outcome of a jury trial. Finally, the paper deconstructs those specific circumstances prior to concluding they are largely inapplicable to the vast majority of interrogations relevant to the court cases examined within this document.

False confessions do not occur infrequently within the criminal justice system. There are a variety of reasons explicating this reality, ranging the gamut in scope and focus. On the one hand, many interrogators readily assume suspects are guilty or, perhaps even worse, simply want to convict them in order to benefit their own particular careers and paths of advancements. In other instances, the criminal justice system wants to punish defendants who have opted not to accept a plea bargain as a way of dissuading people from even utilizing a jury trial as a viable option within the criminal justice system. Despite such speculation, this much is clear regarding the prevalence of false confessions: they often occur as the result of deliberate manipulation on the part of the interrogator. Specifically, a review of the literature indicates too many interrogators are single-mindedly focused on extracting confessions in order to gain convictions that they are on actually doing more work to uncover the truth about an alleged crime.

One of the more cogent pieces of literature which demonstrates this fact is "Inside interrogation: The lie, the bluff, and false confessions" by Perillo and Kassin. This research study offers empirical evidence that certain techniques utilized by investigators in interrogation scenarios, have the effect of producing confessions on the part of innocent people. Still, the most convincing facet of this article occurs in the introduction in which it denotes the frequency of false confessions garnered by deliberately deceptive interrogation techniques as occurring as frequently as 25% of the time in which there are "DNA exoneration cases" (Perillo and Kassin, 2010, p. 327) in America. Another highly effective facet of this research article is its explanation of coercive methods utilized to procure false confessions: the bluff tactic. This ploy involves interrogaters introducing false evidence which does not directly implicate the suspect, yet which still plays a considerable factor in engendering false confessions. This theoretical premise is readily substantiated with empirical evidence in the form of a series of quantifiable experiments predicated around the "Kassin and Keichel computer crash paradigm" (Perillo and Kassin, 2010, p. 327). The boons of this approach is that this original research presents empirically validated evidence of the efficacy of the bluff tactic, alongside other coercive means, in getting innocents to falsely confess. However, drawbacks of this research include the fact that the data is not indicative of the criminal justice system, nor of any sort of crime in general. Therefore, there are innate limits to its applicability to the criminal justice systems, despite its reliance on interrogation techniques widely deployed within that system. Still, some of the other more salient parts of this essay unambiguously pertain to the nature of the interrogation techniques used for false confessions. For instance, it is revealed that the elicitation of coerced or distressed confessions is one of the primary outcomes of the Reid technique, which is widely utilized within American police departments (Perillo and Kassin, 2010, p. 327). Therefore, the capital utility produced by this article is the reenactment of certain aforementioned tactics which are part of the Reid technique and their empirical validation for the responses (in the form of false confessions) they create.

What is noteworthy about the prevalence of false confessions within the American criminal justice system, however, is that it is not indicative of the efforts of police worldwide. In fact, there are certain parts of the world in which the Reid technique is not only eschewed, but the opposite of this methodology is employed. This phenomenon is detailed at length in "Suspect interviews and false confessions" by Gudjonssen and Pearse. This article centers around a lengthy comparison between the Reid technique and the PEACE (Preparation and Planning, Engange and Explain, Account and Clarification, Closure and Evaluation) model (Gudjonssen and Pearse, 2011, p. 34). The latter provides significant evidence that not all interrogators are focused on predetermined ideas about a suspect's conviction, and that some are making earnest efforts to identify the truth in regards to a particular crime. What this article reveals is that the majority of these criminal justice professionals are employed outside of U.S. borders, where the Reid technique is largely avoided. Furthermore, this article denotes that in areas such as New Zealand and Norway, investigators prioritize the opposite attributes of the Reid technique during their interrogations. Firstly, the investigators are prohibited by law to refrain from using falsities and mendacious measures to attain confessions. This mandate drastically reduces the number of false confessions found in these countries and in other parts of the United Kingdom where the PEACE model is deployed (Gudjonssen and Pearse, 2011, p. 34). Therefore, this article functions as a counterpoint to the notion that false confessions are frequently desired by investigators who have presupposed a perpetrator to be guilty.

However, the thesis for this paper is still true because it contends that false confessions are not uniformly sought after, but rather frequently invoked due to the methods of investigators in the United States. The domestic applicability of this thesis to America is truly veritable, and readily corroborates the notion that false confessions are a reality in stateside courtrooms. The prevalence of this phenomenon is underscored by an article from Leo and Liu entitled, "What do jurors know about police interrogation techniques and false confessions?" A survey instrument is utilized within this research study to demonstrate that most jurors are largely unaware of the rate of incidence of the coercive techniques utilized by law enforcement officials to to garner false confessions. It offers "empirical support" (Leo and Liu, 2009, p. 381) for the fact that witnesses can help to educate jurors about the occurrence of this phenomenon, which supports the notion that it does occur regularly in American trials.