Interviewing behaviors in police investigators: a field study of a current US sample

Abstract

Considerable research shows that scientifically based interviewing techniques (e.g. the Cognitive Interview) increase the quality and quantity of witness recall compared to typical police interviewing guidelines. In an effort to improve witness evidence, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) recommended guidelines for conducting witness interviews that follow empirical research (Technical Working Group: Eyewitness Evidence, 1999). These guidelines were distributed to all police departments in the USA in 1999, along with a trainer's manual. The present study is the first to examine whether US police investigators adhere to these nationally published guidelines when interviewing witnesses and victims of crime. A sample of audiotaped real-world witness interviews from 26 South Florida investigators was analyzed. Results indicated that investigators rarely engage in recommended ‘positive’ interviewing techniques (e.g. rapport building or context reinstatement) while using many ‘negative’ techniques (e.g. interrupting the witness or using complex questions). Based on the data provided, it appears that national US recommendations on witness interviewing have not been translated into real-world interviewing practice by the investigators surveyed. Implications for interviewing policies are discussed.

Keywords:

• witness interviewing
• police interviewing behavior
• Cognitive Interview
• interviewing recommendations

Acknowledgements

This research was partially funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Germany. For their assistance in data collection, coding and entry we would like to thank Vincent Pignatello, Mitchell Bartholomew, Rolando Carol and Melinda Miller. We are very grateful to the City of Miami Police Department and the Coral Gables Police Department for their collaboration and support of this study. Aspects of the data were presented at the European–American Psychology and Law Conference (EAPL) 2003, in Edinburgh, Great Britain, at the American Psychology and Law Society Conference (AP-LS) 2005, in La Jolla, CA, 2006 in St Petersburg, FL, at the 2006 International Investigative Interviewing 2nd Conference, Portsmouth, UK, and at the 2007 conference ‘Off the Witness Stand: Using Psychology in the Practice of Justice’, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, NY.

Notes

1. Because some interviewers submitted more tapes than others, all interviews were scored and data were later collapsed across interviews such that a mean rating for each scoring category was computed to keep the number of data points per interviewer the same. All analyses presented reflect this data strategy. We also analyzed the data per interview (not interviewer) and results were similar.