Interrogations-and-Confessions-Handbook

Why do Suspects Confess? Theories 127
sets in or becomes exacerbated, especially as the suspect may have to cope with
unfavourable publicity about the case and begins to talk to friends and relatives
about the crime.
Cognitive Events
Cognitive factors comprise the suspect’s thoughts, interpretations, assumptions
and perceived strategies of responding to a given situation. This kind of factor
can very markedly influence behaviour. What is important to remember is that
the suspects’ behaviour during the interrogation is likely to be more influenced
by their perceptions, interpretations and assumptions about what is happening
than by the actual behaviour of the police. When the suspect perceives the
evidence against him as being strong he is more likely to confess, believing
that there is no point in denying the offence. Table 5.1 lists the kinds of selfstatement
that suspects may make during interrogation. Suspects who ‘talk’
themselves into believing that the interrogators are not going to give up until
they have given a confession, or believe that the police have sufficient evidence
to ‘prove’ that they committed the offence, may be greatly influenced by
such thoughts and beliefs. For innocent people, the thought that the ‘truth’ will
eventually come out even if they give in to persistent interrogation can facilitate
a false confession. Similarly, innocent suspects who begin to doubt their
own recollections of events because they are confused during interrogation may
agree with the unfounded suggestions of the interrogator, and come to believe
that they committed a crime of which they are in fact innocent. These are the
so-called ‘pressured–internalized’ false confessions discussed in detail in
Chapters 8, 18 and 23.
The immediate cognitive consequences may relate to thoughts associated
with the easing of the pressure. For innocent suspects the thought (or hope)
that their solicitor is going to sort everything out may predominate. Suspects
who mistakenly come to believe that they have committed the offence of which
they are accused may come to wonder how they could have committed such a
terrible crime and have no recollection of it. Within days, after their confusional
state has subsided, they may become fully convinced that they had nothing to
do with it.
The most striking cognitive events associated with the potential long-term
consequences of confession undoubtedly relate to thoughts about what is going
to happen as the result of their self-incriminating confession. They begin to
think about the seriousness of their predicament and this may make them
inclined to retract their previously made confession.
Situational Events
Situational events are of many different kinds. The circumstance of the suspects’
arrest (e.g. being arrested suddenly in the early hours of the morning)
may affect the suspects’ ability to cope with the subsequent interrogation, especially
since this coincides with the nadir (i.e. lowest point) of the physiological
cycle. Similarly, being locked up in a police cell for several hours or days may