Investigative interviewing: the literature - New Zealand Police

REVIEW OF INVESTIGATIVE INTERVIEWING
COMPLAINANT
When referring to a ‘complainant’ i.e. the person who
brings a case against another in court, the term has a
precise meaning (analogous to ‘plaintiff’). However it
also has a more general meaning when used to refer to
those who bring a matter to police attention thereby
instigating a police response (Gudjonsson, 1992). It
could be equated to ‘victim’ or ‘witness’ although in some
instances the complainant may not be the direct victim
(e.g., a mother who reports suspected abuse of her
child) or even a direct witness (e.g., someone who
reports his/her neighbour missing).
In these types of instances, the police will interview the
complainant as part of the investigation; yet there seem
to be few references to ‘complainants’ in the literature on
investigative interviewing. A notable exception is McGurk
and colleagues (1993) who list complainants as a distinct
group who are interviewed by police. From a technical
perspective these interviews would be treated as another
form of witness interview.
SUSPECT
A ‘suspect’ is a person suspected of having committed
the offence under investigation. A suspect is also
commonly referred to as the ‘offender’ or ‘perpetrator’,
although the latter is primarily an American term (e.g.,
Kiley, 1998; Leo, 1992; Vessel, 1998). The increasing
use of ‘perpetrator’ in New Zealand and the United
Kingdom could be through the influence of American
police programmes. A further, if somewhat extreme,
term for an offender is found in Morgan (1999, p11) who
refers to ‘violators’ - as in
“Later in this text, we’ll look at some factors that
may be applicable in a typical street encounter
between an officer and a violator”.
INTERROGATION VERSUS
INTERVIEWING
The literature on investigative interviewing shows little
consistency in the use of the terms ‘interviewing’ and
‘interrogation’, although the latter is only associated with
the interviewing of suspects. For example, early material
providing information on techniques that police could
use to try to persuade a person to confess tended to use
the term ‘interrogation’ (see for example Inbau, Reid &
Buckley, 1986). Some observers clearly favour this
distinction:
• “While the objective of an interview is to gain
information, the objective of an interrogation is to gain
a confession” (Meyer & Morgan, 2000, p2).
• “The goal of interviewing is to collect truthful data to
be used for informed decision-making and just
action-taking. An interrogation, on the other hand, is
a face-to-face meeting with a subject with the distinct
objective of gaining an admission or a confession in a
real or apparent violation of law or policy” (Yeschke,
2003, p49).
Negative connotations
In recent years, the use of ‘interrogation’ has fallen out of
favour, not least because of criticisms that some of the
‘interrogation tactics’ advocated could induce false
confessions (Gudjonsson, 1992). The departure from the
term is generally a response to the negative images
arising from use of the word, particularly the image of
people being subjected to unpleasant, unjust and
uncaring physical and psychological tactics by those in
authority over them (CFIS, 2004; Shepherd, 1991).
This type of negative image is captured in the term ‘third
degree’. Leo (1992, pp41-42) describes this as a
catchall phrase for a variety of coercive strategies
associated with interrogation. He makes an interesting
case for “three ideal types of third degree interrogation”:
• ‘traditional’ third degree - the direct application of
physical violence, such as beating and whipping
suspects until they confess - common during the late
19th and early 20th centuries;
• ‘covert’ third degree - physical torture that did not
leave external signs of abuse, such as beating with
rubber hoses, the use of blinding strobe lights or
solitary confinement, food and sleep deprivation, and
prolonged questioning by a series of officers - from
around 1910 to the early 1930s;
• ‘psychological’ third degree - non-physical forms of
coercion such as intimidation, duress, threats of
harm, and promises of leniency.
Leo (1992) argues that the ‘third degree’ forms of
interrogation have been replaced in recent decades by
non-violent strategies based more on deception and
manipulation. The most well-known examples of these
are contained in the somewhat infamous “Criminal
Interrogation and Confessions” by Inbau, Reid & Buckley
(1986). One of the authors, Fred Inbau, has felt it
necessary to defend his position on the tactics this book
espouses:
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