Legal Psychology Gerhard Ohrband ULIM University, Moldova 4 th lecture Police psychology

Course structure Lectures: 1. Introduction into Legal Psychology – Theories of crime 2. Correctional treatment 3. Victimology 4. Police psychology 5. Testimony assessment 6. Criminal responsibility 7. Judicial judgments 8. Psychological assessment of families

Course structure Seminars: 9. Eyewitness testimony 10. Jury decision-making 11. Child abuse 12. Prostitution 13. Rape 14. Tax evasion 15. Stereotypes and prejudices in the law system

1.Police interrogation of witnesses 2.The cognitive interview 3.Interviewing suspects 4.False confessions 5.Hostage negotiations 6.Offender profiling, crime scene analysis Content

1. Police interrogation of witnesses Goals of an interrogation: Detailed illumination of the deed Under diminishment of process faults And secondary victimization Specialities of an interrogation from a communication psychology point of view: Rareness of the incident Institutionalized communication Asymmetrical communication

Basic interrogation principles Witness-centered interrogation style Suggestion-free interrogation style FocusRelationship planeContent plane ElementsPseudosymmetry Transparency Control Meta-communication Openness for results Free report “Trichtertechnik” Non-suggestive questions Quality-ensuring questions

2. The Cognitive Interview Relaxed posture; no hectic movements and other nonverbal or paraverbal signs of tension Regular eye-contect with the interrogated, but no staring Slow speech, short sentences, only one question at a time Active listening, showing attention through social reinforcers (nodding, “mm” etc.) Reinforces only effort, not specific topics Permit pauses, even when they are long Introduction with a neutral or positive topic for the interviewed Communicate expectations (detailled indications, concentration and effort for retrieval) Initiate a free report with an open question Start further interrogation with open question, only afterwards detailed questions Avoid sudden changes of the topic in questions Let the report order to the responsibility of the interrogated person Regular paraphrazing oder summarizing by the interviewer

3. Interviewing suspects

4. False confessions Taxonomy of false confessions (Kassin & Wrightsman, 1985): 1.Free-will 2.Coerced-compliant 3.Coerced-internalized Gudjonsson (2003): free-will, coerced, internalized and source of influence (internal vs. external) USA: false confessions where the cause in ¼ of cases where a DNA analysis showed a false convictions (Drizen & Leo, 2004)

Incidence rates of false confessions: Islandic studies Gudjonsson & Sigurdsson (1994); prison inmates: 12% Motives: a) protecting of another person, b) coercion by the police, c) evasion from further detention Less than 1/3 reported they took their false confession back before the main process 72% said false confession led to a judgment Less than 1% stated they where currently in prison because of a false confession False confession mostly for smaller offenses like theft or damaging of property

Islandic pupils (Gudjonsson, Sigurdsson, Asgeirsdottir & Sigfusdottir, 2006) N = > pupils Ca. 1/5 had already been interrogated as an accused Ca. 50% said to have made a true confession 7,3% (N=641) declared to have made at least one false confession 12% in the group of those interrogated more times Thus: self-confessions without a reliable external criterion represent a problematic measure

Risk factors for false confessions Personality factors Adolescent age Low intellectual capacities Psychiatric disorders Methods of interrogation (“Reid- Technique”)

5. Hostage negotiations S.A.F.E. model (Rogan & Hammer, 2002) Substantive (demand) frame Attunement frame Face frame Emotion frame

6. Offender profiling

Literature Akehurst, L., Milne, R. & Koehnken, G. (2003). The effects of children’s age and delay on recall in a cognitive or structured interview. Psychology, Crime and Law, 9, Collins, A.M. & Loftus, E.F. (1975). A spreading activation theory of semantic processing. Psychological Review, 82, Mello, E.M. & Fisher, R.P. (1996). Enhancing older adult eyewitness memory with the Cognitive Interview. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 10, Sigurdsson, J. & Gudjonsson, G. (1997). The criminal history of “false confessors” and other prison inmates. Journal of Forensic Psychiatry, 8,