Interrogation

The Development of Methods of Interrogation

The modern institution of policing emerged in England in the early part of the nineteenth century and in the United States in the mid- to late-nineteenth century. Police interrogation at the station house is therefore a relatively recent practice. In the early years of modern policing, there were no established interrogation techniques. Instead, officers might interrogate by intuition, learn how to question suspects as part of their job, or not interrogate at all. In America, the “third degree”—the infliction of physical pain and/or psychological distress to extract confessions of guilt—was common (Leo 1992). Through at least the early 1930s, American police routinely beat, tortured, and threatened criminal suspects during interrogation (especially for more serious crimes), sometimes employing methods that left external signs of abuse, but more commonly using physical force in ways that did not (Hopkins 1931). Not only was the third degree common inside the interrogation room but the confessions police elicited were often admitted into court.

As a result of the influential Wickersham Commission Report in 1931, a number of Supreme Court cases beginning with Brown v. Mississippi (1936), and the movement toward police professionalization, use of the third degree began to decline in the 1930s and, less than three decades later, appeared to be rare in America (Leo 1992).

In its place, American police developed increasingly subtle and sophisticated psychological methods of interrogation that they and others came to believe were more effective at eliciting confessions than the old “third degree.” In 1940, W. R. Kidd published Police Interrogation, the first American police interrogation manual, exhorting American police in the new science of modern interrogation. In 1942, Fred Inbau published the first edition of his seminal interrogation manual, Lie Detection and Criminal Interrogation. With John Reid, Inbau published successive versions of this training manual in 1948 and 1953. In 1962, Inbau and Reid reorganized and expanded their teachings on police interrogation and confessions into the first edition of Criminal Interrogation and Confessions. Inbau's Criminal Interrogation and Confessions—now in its fourth edition (Inbau et al. 2001)—is the bible of modern police interrogation training; it has virtually defined the teaching and practice of interrogation in America. The social science research literature confirms that many of the techniques developed by Inbau and Reid are commonly used by detectives in America (Leo 1996; Simon 1991; Wald et al. 1967).

Modern Interrogation Techniques

Social scientists and psychologists have researched the interrogation process and proffered empirically supported theoretical models to explain how and why contemporary psychological techniques lead to the decision to confess (Gudjonsson 1992; Kassin 1997; Ofshe and Leo 1997). Modern interrogation techniques and strategies are designed to break the resistance of rational people who know they are guilty, manipulate them to stop denying their culpability, and persuade them, instead, to confess (Ofshe and Leo 1997). Police interrogators elicit the decision to confess by influencing suspects' perception of (1) the nature and gravity of their immediate situation, (2) their available choices or alternatives given their situation, and (3) the consequences of each of these choices. By continuously manipulating the suspects' perception of their situation and their available alternatives, the interrogators labor to persuade the suspects that they have few options but to confess and that the act of admitting culpability is the most sensible course of action.

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