ABSTRACT
The cases of Daniel Gristwood and Peter Reilly demonstrate the ways in which lying in police practices, when combined with the lies and tricks involved in polygraph interrogations, can produce false confessions and wrongful imprisonment. This chapter seeks to account for the ways in which the lie detection practices of torture and polygraphy have been organised over time, and dealt with in different legal situations. Lie detection depends upon a deceptive and manipulative performance, which further reveals how it is the quintessential expression of the socio-legal failure to derive the truth through honest means. The relations between lie detection and law present opportunities to reflect on lying more broadly, from a sociological perspective. The history of torture and lie detection technology has something to contribute. Scientists tend to dwell on the reduction of false positives in the development of lie detection technologies, in other words to reduce those cases in which an innocent person is incorrectly identified as a liar.
