Interrogations-and-Confessions-Handbook

Persons at Risk During Interviews in Police Custody 59
formal psychological testing. Gudjonsson (1992a) had found in a number of
criminal cases that even experienced clinicians often grossly over-estimated
the intellectual abilities of the clients they were interviewing.
Methodology
Two police stations in the South East of England were selected: Peckham for
an inner London police station and Orpington for a suburban, outer London,
police station. Both police stations were within reasonable reach for the researchers
and had the necessary facilities for the psychological assessment to
be conducted. The Metropolitan Police fully cooperated with the study and a
good working relationship with the custody officers and detectives at the two
police stations was established.
Three experienced clinical psychologists regularly visited two police stations
over a period of three months. All seven days of the week were included. However,
attendance was focused on periods when the police stations were likely
to be busy in order to reduce unnecessary waiting time. The criteria used for
selecting the participants in the Royal Commission study were as follows.
� The participant was not a juvenile (i.e. was 17 years of age or above).
Juveniles are automatically entitled to the presence of an ‘appropriate
adult’ (i.e. responsible adult whose functions are discussed in detail in Chapter
10), irrespective of their mental state or psychological characteristics.
� The participant was detained at the police station for the purpose of an
interview in connection with a criminal offence.
� The participant was not so intoxicated, disturbed or violent that it would
be unsafe and unwise to conduct the psychological assessment.
All suitable suspects who arrived at the police station whilst one of the psychologists
was there were asked to participate in the study.
The Psychological Evaluation
Prior to any psychological testing, the participant was interviewed about his
or her occupational, academic, forensic, medical and psychiatric background.
This was followed by questions about how the participant had been feeling
mentally during the previous seven days. In addition, each participant was
asked questions about their understanding of their legal rights and whether or
not he or she had had their rights explained to them by the police.
In the final section of the interview protocol the researcher was required to
make a clinical judgement about how the detainee seemed behaviourally and
mentally during the interview with the researcher (by that time, the researcher
had spent about 10–15 minutes with the detainee). The items were only endorsed
in the affirmative if there was clear evidence of the behaviour or mental
characteristic relevant to the question. For example, the heading ‘learning difficulty’
was only endorsed if there were strong positive signs that the detainee
was likely to be ‘mentally handicapped’. The reason for using such stringent criteria
was that the researchers were trying to reduce the number of false positive