Interrogations-and-Confessions-Handbook

46 A Psychology of Interrogations and Confessions
of interviews do they remain completely silent (Moston, Stephenson &
Williamson, 1993). In their study, Moston and Engelberg (1993) found that
police officers used five types of strategy to deal with the silences of suspects.
These are the following.
1. ‘Avoidance’ (i.e. stop interviewing the suspect).
2. ‘Downgrading’ (e.g. shifting the questioning to a less threatening topic).
3. ‘Persistence’ (i.e. the officer will continue with the interview along the same
lines).
4. ‘Upgrading’ (i.e. exaggerating or emphasizing the seriousness of the offence
in the hope that the suspect will begin to challenge the allegations).
5. ‘Rationalization’ (e.g. telling the suspect that he does not have to follow the
solicitor’s advice to remain silent, or that this is his opportunity to tell his
side of what happened).
The most common strategies used to deal with suspects who exercised their
right to silence were Persistence (38.3%) and Upgrading (39.1%).
The study of Moston and Engelberg was completed prior to the right to silence
being modified under sections 34–37 of the Criminal Justice and Public
Order Act 1994 (England & Wales; see Wasik & Taylor, 1995), which means that
a court or a jury may now under certain circumstances draw adverse inferences
if suspects fail to answer questions put to them by the police (Home Office, 1995;
Morgan & Stephenson, 1994). The modification to the right to silence will undoubtedly
place many suspects under pressure to speak when questioned by
the police (Gudjonsson, 1994a). Indeed, there is recent evidence that fewer suspects
are exercising their right of silence following these amendments (Bucke &
Brown, 1997).
A major limitation with the Moston–Engelberg study is that the authors
failed to compare the different interview strategies with the outcome of interview
(e.g. confession versus denial). This would have been an interesting factor
to investigate and the authors presumably had all the necessary data.
Moston and Engelberg conclude that the manipulative police interviewing
techniques identified by Irving (1980) ten years previously have largely disappeared.
They argue that this has occurred because of legal restrictions which
make it more difficult for police officers to offer inducements as well as there
being greater awareness about what constitutes psychological coercion.
Moston and Engelberg argue that interrogators commonly lack the necessary
skills to cope with suspects who do not readily come forward with a confession.
This lack of interviewing skill has also been observed by other researchers
(e.g. Baldwin, 1993; Mortimer, 1994; Williamson, 1993). Williamson, a serving
senior English police officer, was very concerned about how traditional coercive
interrogations had de-skilled interrogators and undermined public confidence
in the police:
Unethical behaviour by interrogators has undermined public confidence and left
the police service with a serious skills deficit in its ability to obtain evidence
through questioning (Williamson, 1994, p. 107).