Interrogations-and-Confessions-Handbook

138 A Psychology of Interrogations and Confessions
analysis and with the necessary adjustments the estimated drop in the confession
rate post-Miranda goes from 16 to 4%, which means that there is a loss
of convictions in less than 1% of cases. Thomas (1998) reviews the Cassell–
Hayman (1998) Salt Lake County study, criticizes its methodology and argues
for a ‘steady-state’ theory, according to which the fewer suspects who decide not
to talk to the police following Miranda are compensated by others who now see
it as an advantage to give full and more detailed statements to the police. This
‘offsetting effect’ has left the confession rate post-Miranda unchanged, Thomas
argues. Unfortunately, the Miranda effect debate cannot be easily resolved due
to various methodological problems. What is striking is the absence of recent
American empirical studies on confession rates. There is desperate need for
more American studies in this area.
The studies by Neubauer (1974), Leo (1996a) and Cassell and Hayman (1998)
give an admission rate of between 42 and 47%, which is consistent with Ayling’s
(1984) review almost 20 years ago, which suggested that between 40 and 50%
of American suspects confess during custodial interrogation.
As far as evaluating the English findings in terms of whether there was
either an admission or a confession, the highest rates are found in the Baldwin–
McConville (1980), Mitchell (1983) and Zander (1979) studies. These studies
undoubtedly give artificially inflated admission/confession rates, because they
included only suspects who were subsequently charged and committed to the
Crown Court for trial. The Mitchell study was concerned with cases heard at
the Worcester Crown Court in 1978, Baldwin and McConville looked at Crown
Court cases in London and Birmingham and Zander looked at a sample of cases
heard at the Central Criminal Court (‘The Old Bailey’). The lowest rates were
in the studies by Irving and McKenzie (1989) and Moston, Stephenson and
Williamson (1992). The data in these studies were collected in 1987 and 1989,
respectively, or between one and three years after the implementation of PACE.
As a result of these studies I concluded in The Psychology of Interrogations,
Confessions and Testimony:
These findings indicate that with the introduction of PACE, and the more recent
use of tape recordings, somewhat fewer suspects are confessing. This change could
be attributed to at least two different factors. Firstly, the implementation of PACE
and the increased use of tape recordings could mean that police officers are more
restricted in the type of interrogation techniques they use (Irving & McKenzie,
1989) and this in turn may influence the frequency with which suspects confess.
Secondly, Moston, Stephenson and Williamson (1992) argued that there appears
to be a general mistrust of police questioning which may reduce the number of
suspects who make confessions. If true, this may be related to changes in social
attitudes towards the police, which encourage protests about wrongful conviction
and resistance to interrogation (Gudjonsson, 1992a, pp. 53–54).
Does the current evidence support my 1992 conclusions? No, it does not. As
illustrated in Table 6.1, more recent post-PACE studies of police station data
clearly show admission/confession rates of between 55 and 59%. The Phillips–
Brown (1998) study is based on a sample of 4250 police detainees, not all of
whom were interviewed by the police (It is not clear from the study how many
were not interviewed and how including these suspects in the figures may have