ABSTRACT
Investigative or police decision making involves the identification of and choice between options from amongst a number of different possible lines of enquiry. We argue that this iterative process or feedback loop, the ‘Investigative Cycle’, involves three continuous processes: information collection, investigative inferences and the implementation of investigative actions. Within this cycle we identify a sequence of four stages of potential distortion in information processing: the collection, examination, evaluation and utilisation stages. These distortions include cognitive, presentational, social and pragmatic components. We argue that errors at any of these stages will profoundly effect the other two processes in the investigative cycle. The identification of these cycles, stages and types of distortion allow for the development of a more systematic approach to uncovering where potential weaknesses in an enquiry may evolve.
