ABSTRACT
‘Investigative interviews’ are an important form of evidence gathering. The main objective is to obtain information that is detailed, complete, comprehensible, valid (in legal settings the words ‘safe’ and ‘reliable’ are commonly used to describe validity) and relevant to the legal issues in the case that need to be established and proved. There are a number of governmental and local agencies that are involved in conducting investigative interviews, including the police, customs and excise, the military, and the security services. The focus in this chapter is on investigative interviews in relation to suspects for the purpose of potential prosecution. Here confessions are often crucial in securing a conviction. It is therefore not surprising that police interviewers have traditionally focused on obtaining confessions rather than merely gathering information. In this chapter I discuss the nature of confessions in the area of criminal justice, review the relevant theories and empirical evidence, and show how interrogation can go wrong in terms of producing false confessions.
