A Pervasive Societal Crisis: Crime
A pervasive societal crisis is crime. At that time, we rely on law enforcement to protect us, control crime, and assist citizens. While questioning suspects is crucial for reducing crime and establishing guilt, dialogue is also a key component of interrogation. Due to the chaotic methods used to question suspected terrorists, interrogations have recently drawn a lot of criticism. However, there are similarities between a questioning and an interview. Both techniques involve concentrated conversation in addition to information gathering. Additionally, the goals and results of both strategies are the same. There are differences between the two approaches as well. Some of the strategies used include direct clashes, theme growth, dealing with confrontation, substitute questions and developing details. This paper looks at how interrogation and interviews are used in criminal profiling.
Interrogation and Interviews
Basically, interrogation is an interview. However, compared to conventional interviews, interrogation is considered hostile, antagonistic ad to some level frightening. The main goal is to get secure data and this can be achieved by an interrogator asking questions and applying purposeful dialogue (Blair, 2005). Interrogation has a communication objective; the parties involved discuss an issue of interest while the interrogator makes the assessment of the suspect/interviewee with respect to verbal responses and nonverbal behaviors. Much as interviews and interrogation utilize strategic communication, it is of great importance to recognize how they are related or different. Therefore, in crimes, offender profiling is applied in interviews to collect relevant information and for interrogation, it is used to get suspect confess the crimes and leak details about other suspects while providing detailed details about a certain crime. Even though, interrogation and interviews are different based on the communication strategies, interviews are non-accusatory conversion to get useful information for a specific case and interrogations are accusatory monolog to get the facts from a suspected person (Blair, 2005). Involved parties in the interview schedule time for an interview. Moreover, they do not hurry rather they operate effectively. On the other hand, it is rather challenging to predict an interrogation. They depend on hurried interviews to get the appropriate results. Again, interrogations barely considered as effective communication channels and can take hours. Interviewers depend on informative strategies, which enable an interviewee to reveal useful information about a crime. Actually, an interviewee is persuasive in comparison to the interviewer. Similarly, an interrogator depends largely on persuasive techniques to get suspects to confess to the crime. Although, interrogating the suspect that appears guilty an interrogator attempts to persuade a suspect to confess. An interrogator achieves this by changing a suspect's opinion of the crime and its impacts (Blair, 2005). Furthermore, offender profiling also uses persuasion in interrogations particularly in alteration of views. Persuasion in the interrogation may be complex as a suspect may strongly maintain that he/she is not guilty, which can be hard to change. As a result, an interrogator should have an understanding of human psychology and personality to effectively convince a suspect. In most instances, interrogators depend on persuasive approaches of a fear-moving plea and attempt of reassuring a suspect that confessing to the crime is the most suitable aspect (Blair, 2005). Persuasion highlights varied elements in interviews. For instance, in the interview, an interviewer is the target of the persuasion; hence, an interviewee attempts to convince the interviewer that they are not only reliable but also desirable and competent. Conversely, in interrogation, a suspect is the persuasion target.
Interview and Interrogation Strategies
Criminal profiling uses a number of strategies in interviewing and interrogating suspects, including; Direct confrontation; this is initiated at the start of an interview or interrogation. At the beginning is most appropriate since the interviewer and interrogator should control as well as direct the dialogue (Heuback, 2009). Direct confrontation happens a time when the interviewer or an interrogator state that they understand a suspected committed the crime. They normally allege "I know you did it, you know you did it, simply confess and we go ahead. Nonetheless, if a suspect's reaction does not lead to a confession or no sign of guilt, the interviewer or interrogators should use another approach, themed development. Theme development; this involves giving the suspect a moral excuse while present the reasons to confess by giving likely rationalizations, estimations of the blame or minimizations. In rationalization, the interrogator or interviewers assure the suspect that the crime is acceptable and provides reasons as the rewards surpass the impacts. For instance, the interviewer or interrogator can rationalize a bank theft by informing suspects that due to economic situations, others engage in the same crime. In the estimation of the blame, the interrogator or interviewer transfers some blame to another person or something like the larger society. This is to say, the interviewer or interrogator creates a message suggesting that someone else caused them to take part in a crime. For instance, if a man vandalizes a neighbor's car, the interrogator or the interviewer may blame the neighbor from greatly the man wrongly. Another theme is minimization; using the previous scenario, the interviewer or interrogator can reduce the man's guilt by praising him for not committing worse offenses. The themes are created on the basis of criminology and effective tactics since they take into consideration ethical justifications for a given crime with the goal that they can convince the suspect to confess to the crime. Although these techniques are widely acceptable in criminal profiling, other strategies exist as well. For instance, the Reid Technique of Interrogation uses a compassionate tactic. It involves carrying out a nonaccusatory interview prior to interrogation. Nonetheless, experts disagree with this view alleging that interrogations should start with a direct confrontation with the suspect (Boetig, 2005). Therefore, in criminal profiling recognizing effective interview and interrogation strategies is challenging. For that reason, the federal bureau of investigation (FBI) recommends that not all suspects respond in a similar when under pressure. Instead, the interviewer or interrogator should focus on evidentiary as well as investigative facts rather than instinct (Heuback, 2009) Even though it is useful that interviewer or interrogator to use their intuitions, they should align them with not only facts but also available evidence. Interviewers and interrogators should receive responses to open-ended questions with no judgment or disruption. Allowing a suspect to confess without disruption, interviewers or interrogators meet the basic goal of interviews and interrogations to get necessary information about a crime. This means that it is vital that the interviewer or interrogator permits a suspect to present information on a given crime instead of leading them and not reveal any uncalled for information regarding the crime (Granhad et al. 2016). Therefore, the interviewer or interrogator recognizes communication line, and suspect's behaviors. Competent communicators and thinkers of though procedure recommends that to be a cognitively complex person.
Constructivism and Cognitive Complexity
Constructivism presents a cognitive justification for effective communication. This concept also explains how persons communicate skillfully in social settings and why some are better off than others (Granhad et al. 2016). The constructivist model highlights that people with complex cognitive capabilities are better placed to formulate a complex message plan. Put simply, interrogators whose cognition is complex know what to say, when to say and comprehend how to say it. The communication schemes are a fundamentally tailored message that in due course permits the communicator to proficiently realize one or more communication objectives (Granhad et al. 2016). At that point, cognitive complexity is the mental capacity to distinguish delicate personality and behavior disparities among individuals. Investigators whose cognitive is complex are able to comprehend the other communicator. Cognitive complexity leads to a personality construct in the long run.
Verbal Aggression
Any communication process that is verbally aggressive is seen to be unfriendly and destructive. Nonetheless, verbal hostility can also be used by criminal profilers to realize their intents. A verbally bellicose interrogator, for instance, is more likely to get certain clues pointing to certain criminal activities, because of the coercion involved in the process. While verbal aggression can be realized in achieving goals in certain circumstances, however, in most scenarios, it works to the detriment of an individual's self-concept (Meissner et al. 2014). The media often depicts the process of interrogation as hostile, especially if verbally aggressive interrogators are involved.
Conduction Successful Interrogations
The rationale behind interrogation is to unravel the information that a person is not willing to disclose. As such, an interrogation can only be successful if a confession or admission is made for taking part in a criminal activity. In most cases, interrogations do not avail much as culpable suspects leave without admitting to having made a crime. This has been the reason why many criminals go unpunished and why the cycle of criminal activities cannot be tamed. As such, for successful interrogations, the investigator should prepare adequately for the interrogation in terms of setting and venue considerations, facts about the case and documenting approaches (Meissner et al. 2014). Investigators can only be successful at their investigations if they guarantee confidentiality and control of the setting. Some of the best interrogation settings would be a small, controlled and sound proof chamber. This would help the investigator mute all manner of distraction and compel the subject to respond to inquiries. Moreover, understanding the genesis of a crime gives the interrogator an effective persuasion advantage. Nonetheless, investigators should be cautious about this methodology.
Conclusion
While criminal profiling has been around for ages, it takes strong expertise and good preparation for the investigator to realize their objectives. Based on the paper, it is evident that most investigators leave the interrogation scene outwitted by the guilty suspect (Granhad et al. 2016). This is pegged on poor preparation. In this paper, the element of verbal aggression, theme development, constructivism and Cognitive Complexity were highlighted. Even though effective law enforcement is all about understanding and dealing with human nature, much local police and federal officers are already among the best "practical psychologists" out there today. Integrating your expertise with the systematic knowledge base of the mental health profession and behavioral sciences field can only increase the overall fairness and effectiveness of all phases of the criminal justice process.
Reference
Blair, J. P. (2005). What do we know about interrogation in the United States?. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, 20(2), 44-57.
Boetig, B. P. (2005). Reducing a Guilty Suspect's Resistance to Confessing. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, 74(8), 13.
Heuback, J. (2009). Suspect Interrogation: Communication Strategies and Key Personality Constructs (Doctoral dissertation, Kansas State University).
Granhag, P. A., Mac Giolla, E., Sooniste, T., Strömwall, L., & Liu-Jonsson, M. (2016). Discriminating between statements of true and false intent: The impact of repeated interviews and strategic questioning. Journal of Applied Security Research, 11(1), 1-17. (Cognitive complexity)
Meissner, C. A., Redlich, A. D., Michael, S. W., Evans, J. R., Camilletti, C. R., Bhatt, S., & Brandon, S. (2014). Accusatorial and information-gathering interrogation methods and their effects on true and false confessions: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Experimental Criminology, 10(4), 459-486.
