3 How to talk to suspects in police interviews
Of course, when asking questions in police interviews, there is a lot more to consider than what topics to cover. It’s helpful to think about the whole interview as a complex and important social interaction, during which the other person will be constantly evaluating whether or not they want to keep talking.
It is probably also helpful to think about police suspect interviews as an example of a difficult conversation. While most of us will never find ourselves in a police suspect interview (as either suspect or interviewer) many of us will find ourselves having some difficult conversations during the course of our lives. Therefore, thinking about the conversations we have had in our own lives can help us get a better feel for how those same principles might apply in a police suspect interview.
Of course, a police suspect interview has a lot of rules and regulations that everyday interactions don’t have, but it is very important to remember that interviews are still (from an interpersonal and psychological viewpoint) very human conversations. One of the reasons for encouraging you to consider police suspect interviews in this way is that a lot of our everyday impressions about them come from drama series, which often give quite a false impression of how police suspect interviews are carried out. As a result, focusing on examples from your own experience might be useful.
Police suspect interviews are referred to as ‘difficult conversations’ because very often the suspect will not want to be there, but for legal reasons has to be. Regardless of their innocence or guilt of the offence in question, the suspect is likely to find the conversation stressful and may not want to talk to the officers. The officers themselves are likely to be under pressure too. You can probably imagine the pressure you might feel to deliver results should your interview topic plan be accepted by SIO Harris as the one to be used. So suspect interviews can be difficult and stressful for all participants to varying degrees.
How to approach talking with people in these situations (and indeed in lots of other situations) is very important. Research into police interviewer styles carried out in 2002 by Holmberg and Christianson was illuminating. They carried out a very neat study in which they asked men in prisons, who had been convicted either of murder or sexual offences, about the police interviews that had led to their conviction. The questionnaires asked the men to remember these interviews and how they felt the police officers interviewing them had treated them. They also asked them whether or not they admitted or denied the crimes in those interviews.
The researchers found that there seemed to be two main interview styles – one of which was where officers appeared impatient, aggressive and brusque (the dominant style). This style tended to be associated with suspects denying the crime. In the other style, the officers were more helpful and accommodating and showed more empathy (the humanity style) and this was associated with more admissions of guilt. This research goes against what is often shown in television drama series and is a good example of why not to take what you see in these shows too seriously.