Police Interrogation Methods

As a part of the general public that watches crime shows like “Law and Order” or “CSI”, we are led to believe that their interrogation techniques were always appropriate and that the means always justified the end because the bad guy would always be locked up by the end of the program. I cannot recall at any time the suspect was actually innocent, yet was still locked up.

What I have learned is that it is more evident than not that false confessions have been made in most DNA exonerated people. In the number of DNA exonerated people, most of them were by eyewitness testimony. The first prisoner released because of post-conviction DNA evidence was in 1989 and for 20 years after that there were over 200 more releases. The common denominators to all of these exonerations are eyewitness misjudgments, incorrect scientific evidence, inaccurate informant testimony, and lastly but not least false confessions.

People have been coerced into false confessions for centuries. When we look back at the Salem Witch trials, we see that there were about 50 people that were condemned as witches. Some did not confess until they were physically severely tortured into saying anything just to make the pain stop. Hugo …show more content…
Police interrogation is designed to create stress for the suspect. A popular technique is the Reid Technique. It uses a nine-step process that barrages the suspect with fear induced threats or approaches the them from the direction of understanding for how they could have committed the crime considering their circumstances. The passive direction’s theory is that they will see confession as a quick end to the entire experience, sometimes with the hope of getting to go