https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9270-4720
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ABSTRACT
There are two primary investigative interview objectives: gathering information to determine what happened and who did it and assessing the witness’s reliability. The present study examined to what extent investigative interviewers gather investigation-relevant information (IRI) compared to interviewee details (ID) to assess witness reliability. As part of a training course, 42 police officers participated as interviewers and mock witnesses by viewing a crime video. The interviews were recorded and rated for question type and question content through thematic analyses. IRI questions accounted for 78% of the questions asked, while ID questions accounted for 22% of the questions asked. The police officers assessed the way witnesses perceived this information and the attendant meta-processes and used more inappropriate questions than appropriate questions. These results help to elucidate the objectives of police interviews that should be considered when evaluating witness performances in laboratory settings and when developing effective interviewing protocols.
Acknowledgments
We wish to fully thank the Centre National d’Études et de Formation de la Police Nationale, as well as the police trainers and trainees who agreed to the data collection. We thank Emmanuel Launay, Msc, for his help in coding the data.
Disclosure statement
The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and publication of this article. No financial interest or benefit has arisen from the direct applications of this research.
Notes
1. Amount of time under observation; Distance; Visibility; Obstruction; Known or seen before; Any reason to remember; Time lapse; Error or material discrepancy.
2. Planning & Preparation, Engage & Explain, Account, Closure, Evaluation.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Céline Launay
Céline Launay is a Lecturer in social Psychology at the University of Toulouse (CNRS). Her primary research interests focus on the examination of police interviewing and investigation as well as social influence. She has worked with the police, various investigators and lay people through training into the cognitive interview and witness suggestibility. She is a member of the European Association of Psychology and Law. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9270-4720
Jacques Py
Jacques Py is a Professor of social psychology at the University of Toulouse and CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique). His research focuses during the past 25 years, in the field of cognitive and social psychology of eyewitness testimony with particular emphasis given to an approach aiming at building interview protocols for justice professionals: cognitive interview, person description interview, designing lineup, deception detection. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8595-5855
Maïté Brunel
Maïté Brunel is a lecturer in social psychology and justice at the University of Lille. She is part of the PSITEC team (Psychology: interactions, time, emotions, cognition). Her work focuses on interviewing techniques for adults and vulnerable witnesses and victims of crime. She is an assistant to the editor of the European Journal of Applied Psychology. She teaches social psychology and is co-responsible for a specialized Master’s degree in Psychology and Justice. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4632-8971
Samuel Demarchi
Samuel Demarchi is an assistant professor at the Université Paris 8, in the Human and Artificial Cognition Lab. He works on identification issues, expert report fairness, deception detection, interviewing methods such as the cognitive interview and the verifiability approach. He is a member of the International Investigative Interviewing Research Group, of the Cercle des Psychologues Francophones de la Police Nationale, and of the Association Lyonnaise de Médecine Légale. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1985-4754