ABSTRACT
Police-suspect interview discourse has a vital function in the England and Wales (E&W) criminal justice process. For the police themselves, the formal interview is a key part of any investigation into a criminal offence. The interview later goes on to have a significant further function as a piece of evidence in itself, exhibited and presented in court as part of the prosecution case. Words spoken during the interview thus have a dual context, being produced in both interview room and courtroom, and a correlating dual function, being both investigative and evidential. Yet these contexts and functions are very different, and perhaps even conflicting, as we shall see. In addition, interview data undergo several changes in format en route from interview room
to courtroom, each of which affects the integrity of the evidence. This ‘contamination’ of verbal evidence makes a stark contrast with the forensic treatment of physical evidence, which according to long-accepted principle must be preserved as intact as possible. This chapter will explore the influence of all these factors on police-suspect interviews,
and will demonstrate that there are potentially serious implications for their role as evidence. It will also serve to illustrate that linguistics offers a powerful set of tools for unpicking exactly how something as socially significant as criminal evidence can be discursively ‘constructed’.
The process begins when the police conduct an interview with someone suspected of committing a criminal offence. The interview is recorded, in the vast majority of cases, onto audiocassette tapes. Some moves are now being made towards digital recording and video recording is occasionally used, but only for the most serious cases. An official transcript known as the ‘Record of Taped Interview’ (ROTI) is then produced from the audio tape and so from here on the interview interaction is available in two versions; one spoken and one written. In practice, however, the written, rather than the taped version is relied upon.
