Handbook of Psychology of Investigative Interviewing: Current Developments and Future Directions
Page 8
cates them. This is always a useful strategy for suspects, who can then decide
whether or not to make any admissions depending on the strength of evidence
against them. Second, it is an attempt to justify a criminal act as a consequence
of alcohol/drugs, not criminal intent, that is, the offence was almost an
‘ accident ’ .
Denial of m otivation. Some suspects challenge on the grounds that the
offence details do not fi t because they are, ‘ just not my style ’ , as in, ‘ I ’ ve
done karate. If I ’ d hit that person they ’ d never get up ’ . Similar types of appeal
might also be heard in burglary cases: ‘ You know me. I only pinch what I can
carry. ’
A common theme here is that the suspect is appealing to the interviewer
for understanding, asking to be believed. Crucially, in such instances, suspects
do not say that they did not commit the action; rather, that it simply does not
fi t their usual pattern, it is not in their character, dubious though their char-
acter admittedly is. This may well be most commonly used by those with
considerable previous experience of police questioning. The suspect cleverly
avoids directly responding to the accusation with an outright denial, giving
the interviewer the chance to draw the right conclusion.
A variation on this strategy involves suspects challenging the accusation on
the grounds that they would not have committed the offence because it ‘ simply
wasn ’ t worth it ’ . For example, the amount of money that could have been
taken would have been very small, or in the case of goods, they would not
have been worth taking. On some occasions the suspect may make reference
to the possible punitive consequences that could have arisen: ‘ It wouldn ’ t be
worth going to prison for the sake of a few quid. ’ There is a further variation
on this strategy, outlined by Inbau et al. (2001) in their description of the
‘ specifi c denial ’ strategy of a suspect who says, ‘ I didn ’ t shoot her with a Colt.
357. ’
28
Handbook of Psychology of Investigative Interviewing
Active d enials
Denial of o ffence. Seemingly a common defence in cases in which children
have alleged that they had been sexually abused has been the claim that it was
‘ All a fi gment of their imagination ’ . In fact, this challenge is common in many
sexual offences, even those in which adults are the accusers. It is clearly an
attempt to undermine the credibility of the witness.
Interviewers tend to counter this defence by asking something like
‘ So you ’ re saying this girl made all this up? ’ This may force the suspect to
attack the credibility of the witness, either directly and personally or in terms
of broad generalizations, such as ‘ Kids always make up stuff like that, don ’ t
they? ’
The other common response to the interviewer ’ s question is ‘ No, I ’ m not
saying that ’ , thus inviting an accusation of being self - contradictory, but prob-
ably designed to play for time in order to keep their defensive options open.
The attempt to force the suspect ’ s hand by asking something along the lines
of, ‘ Then what are you saying? Is she a liar or isn ’ t she? ’ is unlikely to secure
an admission and may play into the suspect ’ s hands, if, as does happen, the
interviewer asks the suspect to explain why that person might bear a grudge
or have a reason to lie. Although the suspect ’ s explanation for the accuser ’ s
lack of credibility may be at a general level, as with the example ‘ Kids always
make up stuff like that ’ , a specifi c explanation based on past exchanges between
the suspect and accuser are more likely to impress. The latter is likely to be
perceived as more credible.
Denial of i nterpretation. Some suspects suggest that the police have mis-
interpreted an innocent action. Although on many occasions this could well
be the case, this strategy is rarely used in a way that conveys credibility.
Suspects sometimes appear unsure of the motives for their own actions and
fail to offer a coherent explanation of events. In the following example,
following an assault, a person has been arrested while running from the police:
Interviewer : Why were you running?
Suspect :
Well, everyone else started running and I thought they were
running for a train or something, so I ran as well, then one
of your lot grabbed me.
One obvious problem here is the ‘ or something ’ that is included in the
explanation. The suspect may well be hedging, that is keeping their options
open in order to avoid presenting a story that might confl ict with the account
of any others who may also have been arrested. On occasions, interviewers
may fi nd it almost impossible not to contain their disbelief when this strategy
is used, as is illustrated in the following example.
A Typology of Denial Strategies by Suspects in Criminal Investigations 29
Interviewer : But why do you think that he [the witness] would want to
accuse you of a serious offence?
Suspect : I
don
’ t know.
Interviewer : The way you say it that you was walking along the street, next
thing you know you was grabbed by a bloke who ’ s got a knife
and you haven ’ t a clue what ’ s going on.
Suspect :
I just really don ’ t know. I don ’ t know. I was baffl ed at the time,
like all I was worried about was getting away from the knife,
you know what I mean?
Interviewer : Seems very strange. … but you see, it just leaves that big gaping
doubt. Why would a man want to accuse you of something
you hadn ’ t done …
Suspect : I
don
’ t know.
Interviewer :
… when you ’ ve never seen him before in your life?
Suspect: I
don
’ t know. Perhaps he mistook me for someone. I don ’ t
know.
This type of denial probably reduces the credibility of the speaker. The
suspect ’ s statement contains so many hedges and ambiguities that it app-
ears that his recall of the incident is especially poor. In practice, this style
of denial will probably be interpreted as a lie, but certainly not necessarily
deservedly.
Denial of c ausation. Some suspects try to challenge facts, such as being
found in possession of stolen goods, by suggesting that they did not know
that the items were stolen and that they had borrowed them from a friend
(thereby shifting the blame onto others). The suspect is not challenging the
evidence itself, since that is likely to be incontestable; instead, they are chal-
lenging the assumptions that can be drawn from it, and in particular that they
are guilty of an offence.
The purpose of this challenge is to divert attention from the suspect by
drawing attention to another potential suspect, who may or may not be speci-
fi ed. One aspect of this challenge is that the suspect will probably be reluctant
to directly accuse another person; often they are merely trying to raise the
possibility that another person w
as involved. This challenge often loses cred-
ibility when the interviewer directly asks the suspect if the second person is
the person responsible for the offence, as in the following example.
Suspect : I
didn
’ t steal the tapes; I just borrowed them from Andy
’ s
house.
Interviewer : But
I
’ ve just told you they were stolen, so are you saying that
Andy stole them?
Suspect :
Well, no, I ’ m not saying that.
30
Handbook of Psychology of Investigative Interviewing
Another classic scenario here would be ‘ I didn ’ t steal it. I bought it from a
man in the pub ’ . This strategy is low in credibility simply because it is intended
to be vague (the man in the pub never has a name!) and thus diffi cult to verify.
This denial strategy is often used as a direct consequence of police interviewing
practices which place the suspect in a situation involving two undesirable
options: accept the evidence or implicate a friend. If the latter course is chosen,
the interviewer may have problems in deciding which of the suspects is truthful
and which is deceptive.
A variation on this strategy is to invoke the hand of God:. ‘ I don ’ t know
how they got there ’ is a good illustration of this in relation to stolen goods.
Here, the suspect suggests that the evidence against them (stolen property
found in their possession) had mysteriously appeared and that they were even
more surprised to fi nd it than the police. There is no attempt to attribute any
cause to this minor miracle, the police will not be accused of fabricating evi-
dence (although some interviewers may feel this is being implied), nor will
another person be implicated. It is as if the hand of God somehow intervened
in the matter and placed the items there.
The key aspect of this denial strategy is the lack of any speculation about
how the items came to be in the suspect ’ s possession because, again, the guilty
suspect will be reluctant to be tied down to a single explanation of events
which might be discredited.
Presumed g uilty
Offi cers in many countries tend to work on the premise that a good outcome of
an interrogation is a confession (Stephenson & Moston, 1993 ; Weber, 2007 ),
interviewing competence often being defi ned by the numbers of confessions
elicited (Blair, 2005 ). This approach sets the scene for the possibility of false
confessions, in that offi cers may adopt questioning techniques that coerce the
suspect into retracting their earlier statement. Although, traditionally, offi cers
are likely to interpret the retraction as justifying coercive techniques, UK judges
have more recently taken a very different view. Confession evidence alone is
unlikely to be persuasive, and confessions made under any kind of duress run a
real risk of not being admitted in evidence (Williamson, 2006 ).
The current emphasis on the avoidance of false confessions refl ects the great
emphasis on the role played by police questioning techniques, specifi cally the
psychological ploys adopted to manipulate the suspect ’ s decision - making. For
example, police questioning techniques are thought to be largely responsible
for eliciting both coerced - compliant and coerced - internalized false confessions
(see Kassin & Gudjonsson, 2004 ). This view has not been helped by the
limited literature on police interviews with suspects (e.g., Inbau et al. , 2001 ),
which tends to concentrate on how to overcome denials and elicit confessions.
This emphasis remains prevalent in the USA and no doubt many other juris-
dictions (Buckley, 2006 ).
A Typology of Denial Strategies by Suspects in Criminal Investigations 31
Psychological research on the statements of child victims of sexual abuse
has led to the development of techniques for analysing the accuracy of state-
ments, such as criteria - based content analysis (for a review, see Vrij, 2005 ).
The underlying assumption of these techniques is that the statements of a
truthful child and a deceptive child are inherently different. Similar assump-
tions underlie police training in the detection of lie signs (e.g., Walkley, 1987 ).
Lie signs are specifi c statements that are believed to be indicative of guilt. For
example, a verbal lie sign would be a statement such as ‘ I hope my mother
drops dead if I ’ m lying ’ or ‘ I swear on my kid ’ s life ’ . Such statements, it is
argued (e.g., Inbau et al. , 2001 ), are typically used by guilty suspects who
overstate their innocence. Certain phrases may suggest deception because of
their inherent lack of credibility, but they could also come from suspects with
poor memories, or who were possibly trying to protect another person. It will
also become apparent that certain forms of denial are sometimes a direct result
of particular police questioning techniques.
Implicit in the notion of overstated innocence is the idea that guilty suspects
protest too strongly. This assumes that an innocent person will protest their
innocence at an optimal level. Such ideas lack any empirical evidence and are
essentially ‘ words of wisdom ’ passed on by experienced investigators. Given
that police offi cers are notoriously poor at detecting deceit, such statements
can only be treated as spurious suggestions that are probably best avoided.
There are, however, a number of encouraging research developments on
the detection of deception that encourage the expectation that greater under-
standing of the behaviour of suspects in response to accusations, and in par-
ticular variation in denial strategies, may contribute to the scientifi c analysis of
deception (e.g. Frank, Yarbrough
& Ekman,
2006 ). We shall conclude,
however, with a consideration of how in practice police offi cers respond to
denials by suspects.
Handling d enials
One of the most obvious stumbling blocks for police offi cers when questioning
a suspect is handling their challenges or denials. For police offi cers, it can be
quite disconcerting to fi nd that suspects do not immediately accept the seem-
ingly obvious, namely, that they must be guilty. Many suspects challenge the
evidence or deny the allegation, no matter how incontrovertible or incontest-
able it seems to the investigating offi cer. Police interviewers often appear to
attribute denials to the stupidity or stubbornness of the suspect. A denial is
met with a degree of disbelief refl ecting the view that the suspect was just too
stupid to accept that the evidence was clear - cut. On other occasions a denial
is dismissed on the grounds that ‘ We just didn ’ t have enough evidence ’ . That
is, the interviewer would undoubtedly have obtained an admission if only they
had gathered that bit more evidence. Finally, some interviewers may feel that
they talked the suspect into a denial. The interview may have gone badly, with
32
Handbook of Psychology of Investigative Interviewing
the interviewer failing to sound convincing or giving a false impression of the
(strong) evidence against the suspect.
use when denying an allegation. Some strategies involve explicit denials, whilst
others are more evasive, with some suspects willing to provide detailed answers
to questions, whilst others will confi ne their replies to short, dismissive state-
ments. One obvious problem that can arise during questioning is that when
probing for additional verifying information, interviewers give the impression
that they do not believe anything that the suspect has said. This may forestall
any subsequent responses. If this occurs, the interviewer might make the
unfortunate mistake of assuming that the person must have been lying.
Although it would be wrong to say that some forms of challenge by suspects
are more likely to involve deception than others, it may be that interviewers
perceive certain forms of reply as less credible than others. As a future hypoth-
esis, it may be that certain types of denials, used in particular circumstances,
are relatively unusual and thus predictive of credibility. Denial strategy might
form one component for a form of statement validity analysis for adult suspects
and contribute to the refi nement of systems of interviewing analysis (e.g. Frank
et al. , 2006 ).
References
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Bucke , T . & Brown , D. ( 1997 ). In police custody: Police powers and suspects ’ rights under
the revised PACE codes of practice. A research and statistics directorate report .
London : Home Offi ce .
Bucke , T. , Street , R. & Brown , D. ( 2000 ). The right of silence: The impact of the
Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. A research, development and statistics
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Buckley J. P.
(
2006 ).
The Reid Technique of interviewing and interrogation
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Cassell , P. G. & Hayman , B. S. ( 1996 ). Police interrogation in the 1990s: An empirical