Interesting conversation Jason. As a UK police officer who trained (and occasionally still does train) investigative interviewing of suspects and witnesses I suggest there are two big reasons why the Reid technique is not used here
1) it presupposes the interviewee is guilty and thus
2) it focusses on obtaining a confession.
It was the predominance of these beliefs in my country that led to numerous high profile convictions in the 1970s which, had they occurred before 1965 and the abolition of the death penalty, would undoubtedly have resulted in people being executed for crimes they did not commit.
As Eric Shepherd, the designer of PEACE says, there are at least 5 reasons someone would confess to something they have not done apart from having actually done it. This makes pursuing confessions largely pointless. It's more effective to simply obtain an account which can then be tested against information already known or discovered by a thorough investigation. Even if the account is, in fact, a confession.
Jason - I have to take exception to your statement that in the UK certain elements of the Reid technique are considered torture. No UK court, government body, or official legal authority classifies any elements of the Reid Technique as torture. Under the PACE act, and the PEACE model, certain elements of the Reid technique are not allowed. That doesn’t make it torture. I worked very closely in a prior life with SO-15 and New Scotland Yard on interview/interrogation and interview/elicitation (terrorism cases). I appreciate your coverage of the issue, but a blanket statement of torture is not factually correct.
Hello Morgan, thanks very much for your comment. One of the best things about running the Crime & Psychology newsletter is that I get to meet people like yourself with proper hands-on expertise in different areas. My source for the claim was, I think, the Moore & Fitzsimmons paper I cite above. I would say I’ll check the source, but I trust you more anyway. I’ll fix it! Thanks for bringing my attention to it. Going back to the newsletter will also allow me to fix a couple of typos I just noticed. Many thanks again. Good to meet you!
Jason - thank you for the kind reply. Sometimes I hesitate to engage because too many people take constructive observations personally. There was actually another study done by Reid and Associates at the National Security Agency. Three hundred cases recorded with audio/video with known outcomes were evaluated against verbal, non-verbal behavior (behaviour in your area). The methodology was to have a reviewer listen only to the audio and then assess truthful or deceptive behavior. Another set of reviewers heard no audio but only watched the video. A third set had both audio and video. And a fourth set had audio/video plus the case facts. The result?
Cases with audio, the reviewer was only accurate 55% of the time determining truthful or deceptive behavior. With just video it rose to 65%. With both audio and video it climbed to a little over 80%. And with access to audio/video, plus the case facts, the conclusion was that a ‘properly’ trained interviewer, utilizing both verbal and non-verbal behavior, and armed with the case facts, could correctly assess truthful or deceptive behavior 93% of the time. Polygraphs are around 88% effective.
I appreciate your work and analysis in the area of human behavior. I’m approaching the field with a First Principles approach, looking at constraints of space, time, human behavior under stress, evidence tested against reality and constraints, and taking a fresh look at open and unsolved cases.
Not at all, Morgan. It’s always good to hear from well- informed readers! I don’t take that kind if thing personally at all. This isn’t, as they say, X! Interesting work there on the detection of lying. There’s a lot of psychology on ut which I’m going to have to trawl through at some point. It would probable make a good PhD thesis for someone. I want to write something for the substack about false confessions, too, or did until I realised my knowledge was twenty years old. It’s impossible to keep up. I’ll be interested to check out your work.
Thank you. There are two types of false confessions, I think. The first is compelled through duress. The second is what Henry Lee Lucas did. He was dubbed 'The Confession Killer'. Over 200 homicides he said he did, but later found he was given just enough information by law enforcement to make a credible confession. The participation by law enforcement in this circus act is a deep dive worth pursuing.
Hot Take: The Reid Technique should be banned. Law enforcement officers aren’t trained in forensic psychology and don’t know how to utilize psychological tools appropriately to illicit genuine confessions. It’s the same as psychologists practicing outside their scope, speaking on or using forensic tools when they aren’t trained. It’s unethical.
I was John E. Reid’s first outside instructor. I taught federal, state, and local law enforcement, including a stint at NSA. I used psychological tools all the time. As someone who has testified hundreds of times in Federal and state court, never once was an objection raised that my interview and interrogation should be inadmissible because I wasn’t trained in forensic psychology. As long as LEO’s are properly trained, regardless of the technology or technique, there has never been a requirement that an officer has to be a physicist to operate radar/lidar, or be a chemist to conduct a field test of suspected drugs.
In State v. Jackson, the Oregon Supreme Court (not exactly a bastion of police supporters) ruled “that the Reid Technique is not coercive, and as with all strategies to develop information from a suspect, must be viewed in the context of the “totality of circumstances,” stating that, “We do not suggest that the use of the Reid technique or other strategies to obtain information from a suspect is necessarily coercive…The question that the trial court must decide is not whether a particular interrogation method was used, but whether, considering the totality of the circumstances, the suspect’s will was overborne.”
Courts continue to validate it under constitutional standards, and trained officers apply it as a lawful investigative tool. A blanket ban would ignore this established legal acceptance and the technique’s structured guidelines for appropriate use.
Mr. Wright, your first statement provides enough insight into the bias you hold for the next two paragraphs to be essentially useless in supporting your position.
In regard to State v. Jackson: the court upheld the suppression of the confession. You conveniently left that part out.
With disrespect, if you fail to see how the Reid technique has been and continues to be weaponized against people because untrained and uneducated law enforcement officers misuse it and do not follow the guidelines, that tells me a whole lot.
I’ll close with this: my very first grad school course was an ethics in psychology course. The entire class was centered around staying within your scope, among other ethical considerations, but since I study forensic psychology, it is specifically outlined that specialized training or the lack of such training is detrimental to clients and their cases if an untrained psychologist serves as an expert witness in a subject they don’t actually have specialized knowledge in. John Hinkley Jr. was able to successfully use an insanity defense which had a snowball effect and subsequently changed laws in many states, including I believe four states disallowing the NGRI defense. That was a direct result of unqualified evaluators on both the prosecution and defense.
It all connects and it’s important to understand behavioral psychology before walking into an interrogation room.
I’m a little perplexed that you take this so personal. Of course the confession was suppressed, but not the techniques. You’re conflating separate issues.
I don’t have to have a degree to be trained in how to use a technology or technique. That is an argument from authority and is rife with credentialism. I had a political science professor in college who wasn’t allowed to teach a certain course because all he had was a Master’s degree. The PhD teaching the course used the textbook written by my professor.
You can choose to be offended or engage in civil discourse. I leave the decision in your hands. All the best.
What you read as “being offended” is perplexing to me. In your original response, there are a lot of “I”’s- “I was John E. Reid’s first outside instructor,” “I taught…including a stint at NSA”, “I used [these] tools all the time… never once was an objection raised.”
Since you clam to be trained in behavior analysis, what would you draw from that? Typically, front loading a comment with a bunch of ego based statements is akin to peacocking. But, like a good researcher, I looked into you, since you claim to be such an expert, and I’m not surprised to see that you don’t have a degree in anything even remotely related to law enforcement, criminal justice, or forensic psychology. In fact, Mr. Wright, you went to school for HR Management, CIS, and Business.
Additionally, your most recent work includes sensationalizing true crime investigations, including active investigations you aren’t involved in. More to my original point, it’s unethical to go on, say, Fox News and speak at length about an active missing person investigation of a highly vulnerable person in which the media intervening could be detrimental to finding her alive— especially as a non-expert. We’ve seen this before: the media gets involved, talking heads speculate, and investigations get detailed because of too much outside intervention. In the digital age, this is an even bigger problem. It’s unethical for anyone with any credibility in forensic psychology to be speaking on cases they aren’t involved in, and is actually specifically outlined in the APA guidelines.
I’m not intimidated by accusations of taking things personally, because unlike you, I actually do have education in this field, and it is incredibly important to me. Use as many court cases as you want; anyone can Google use and AI to formulate a response resembling something that sounds legitimate. Sounds like that’s what you do best.
I think a lot of people would agree with you, Maggie, that the Reid Technique should either be banned or substantially altered. Police officers might counter that it helps them catch a lot of bad guys, which must be a positive. They'd also say that while they may not be trained in forensic psychology, they *are* trained in the Reid Technique! It's a complicated issue I suppose.
Something that’s always bothered me…why force a confession out of someone who’s innocent when this leaves the real criminal to walk about free as a bird?
I suppose there are a number of reasons. Impelled by the advice never to attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance, I suspect the main one is that the officers in question honestly believe they've got their man and just need to squeeze the truth out of him. We're all susceptible to a certain reluctance to think we might have been wrong all along. There are plenty of other possibilities, though, too bleak to think about...
With respect to the Reid technique (I say this as a former Reid instructor), it is antithetical to ‘force’ a confession. The opposite is a key aspect of training, which is to withhold vital details of the crime and allowing the person being interviewed/interrogated to provide those details as a way to corroborate their knowledge of the crime. Any officer who forces a confession is usually untrained in proper techniques. In my experience, forced confessions are easy to detect because they lack the authenticity and propriety knowledge needed.
There are two stages - the interview and interrogation. Not every interview leads to an interrogation, but every interrogation is preceded by an interview. The only time an investigator would move to an interrogation is if enough information was developed to believe there is a reasonable suspicion the person being interviewed committed the crime.
Interesting conversation Jason. As a UK police officer who trained (and occasionally still does train) investigative interviewing of suspects and witnesses I suggest there are two big reasons why the Reid technique is not used here
1) it presupposes the interviewee is guilty and thus
2) it focusses on obtaining a confession.
It was the predominance of these beliefs in my country that led to numerous high profile convictions in the 1970s which, had they occurred before 1965 and the abolition of the death penalty, would undoubtedly have resulted in people being executed for crimes they did not commit.
As Eric Shepherd, the designer of PEACE says, there are at least 5 reasons someone would confess to something they have not done apart from having actually done it. This makes pursuing confessions largely pointless. It's more effective to simply obtain an account which can then be tested against information already known or discovered by a thorough investigation. Even if the account is, in fact, a confession.
Jason - I have to take exception to your statement that in the UK certain elements of the Reid technique are considered torture. No UK court, government body, or official legal authority classifies any elements of the Reid Technique as torture. Under the PACE act, and the PEACE model, certain elements of the Reid technique are not allowed. That doesn’t make it torture. I worked very closely in a prior life with SO-15 and New Scotland Yard on interview/interrogation and interview/elicitation (terrorism cases). I appreciate your coverage of the issue, but a blanket statement of torture is not factually correct.
Hello Morgan, thanks very much for your comment. One of the best things about running the Crime & Psychology newsletter is that I get to meet people like yourself with proper hands-on expertise in different areas. My source for the claim was, I think, the Moore & Fitzsimmons paper I cite above. I would say I’ll check the source, but I trust you more anyway. I’ll fix it! Thanks for bringing my attention to it. Going back to the newsletter will also allow me to fix a couple of typos I just noticed. Many thanks again. Good to meet you!
Jason - thank you for the kind reply. Sometimes I hesitate to engage because too many people take constructive observations personally. There was actually another study done by Reid and Associates at the National Security Agency. Three hundred cases recorded with audio/video with known outcomes were evaluated against verbal, non-verbal behavior (behaviour in your area). The methodology was to have a reviewer listen only to the audio and then assess truthful or deceptive behavior. Another set of reviewers heard no audio but only watched the video. A third set had both audio and video. And a fourth set had audio/video plus the case facts. The result?
Cases with audio, the reviewer was only accurate 55% of the time determining truthful or deceptive behavior. With just video it rose to 65%. With both audio and video it climbed to a little over 80%. And with access to audio/video, plus the case facts, the conclusion was that a ‘properly’ trained interviewer, utilizing both verbal and non-verbal behavior, and armed with the case facts, could correctly assess truthful or deceptive behavior 93% of the time. Polygraphs are around 88% effective.
I appreciate your work and analysis in the area of human behavior. I’m approaching the field with a First Principles approach, looking at constraints of space, time, human behavior under stress, evidence tested against reality and constraints, and taking a fresh look at open and unsolved cases.
Not at all, Morgan. It’s always good to hear from well- informed readers! I don’t take that kind if thing personally at all. This isn’t, as they say, X! Interesting work there on the detection of lying. There’s a lot of psychology on ut which I’m going to have to trawl through at some point. It would probable make a good PhD thesis for someone. I want to write something for the substack about false confessions, too, or did until I realised my knowledge was twenty years old. It’s impossible to keep up. I’ll be interested to check out your work.
Thank you. There are two types of false confessions, I think. The first is compelled through duress. The second is what Henry Lee Lucas did. He was dubbed 'The Confession Killer'. Over 200 homicides he said he did, but later found he was given just enough information by law enforcement to make a credible confession. The participation by law enforcement in this circus act is a deep dive worth pursuing.
Hot Take: The Reid Technique should be banned. Law enforcement officers aren’t trained in forensic psychology and don’t know how to utilize psychological tools appropriately to illicit genuine confessions. It’s the same as psychologists practicing outside their scope, speaking on or using forensic tools when they aren’t trained. It’s unethical.
I was John E. Reid’s first outside instructor. I taught federal, state, and local law enforcement, including a stint at NSA. I used psychological tools all the time. As someone who has testified hundreds of times in Federal and state court, never once was an objection raised that my interview and interrogation should be inadmissible because I wasn’t trained in forensic psychology. As long as LEO’s are properly trained, regardless of the technology or technique, there has never been a requirement that an officer has to be a physicist to operate radar/lidar, or be a chemist to conduct a field test of suspected drugs.
In State v. Jackson, the Oregon Supreme Court (not exactly a bastion of police supporters) ruled “that the Reid Technique is not coercive, and as with all strategies to develop information from a suspect, must be viewed in the context of the “totality of circumstances,” stating that, “We do not suggest that the use of the Reid technique or other strategies to obtain information from a suspect is necessarily coercive…The question that the trial court must decide is not whether a particular interrogation method was used, but whether, considering the totality of the circumstances, the suspect’s will was overborne.”
Courts continue to validate it under constitutional standards, and trained officers apply it as a lawful investigative tool. A blanket ban would ignore this established legal acceptance and the technique’s structured guidelines for appropriate use.
Mr. Wright, your first statement provides enough insight into the bias you hold for the next two paragraphs to be essentially useless in supporting your position.
In regard to State v. Jackson: the court upheld the suppression of the confession. You conveniently left that part out.
With disrespect, if you fail to see how the Reid technique has been and continues to be weaponized against people because untrained and uneducated law enforcement officers misuse it and do not follow the guidelines, that tells me a whole lot.
I’ll close with this: my very first grad school course was an ethics in psychology course. The entire class was centered around staying within your scope, among other ethical considerations, but since I study forensic psychology, it is specifically outlined that specialized training or the lack of such training is detrimental to clients and their cases if an untrained psychologist serves as an expert witness in a subject they don’t actually have specialized knowledge in. John Hinkley Jr. was able to successfully use an insanity defense which had a snowball effect and subsequently changed laws in many states, including I believe four states disallowing the NGRI defense. That was a direct result of unqualified evaluators on both the prosecution and defense.
It all connects and it’s important to understand behavioral psychology before walking into an interrogation room.
I’m a little perplexed that you take this so personal. Of course the confession was suppressed, but not the techniques. You’re conflating separate issues.
I don’t have to have a degree to be trained in how to use a technology or technique. That is an argument from authority and is rife with credentialism. I had a political science professor in college who wasn’t allowed to teach a certain course because all he had was a Master’s degree. The PhD teaching the course used the textbook written by my professor.
You can choose to be offended or engage in civil discourse. I leave the decision in your hands. All the best.
What you read as “being offended” is perplexing to me. In your original response, there are a lot of “I”’s- “I was John E. Reid’s first outside instructor,” “I taught…including a stint at NSA”, “I used [these] tools all the time… never once was an objection raised.”
Since you clam to be trained in behavior analysis, what would you draw from that? Typically, front loading a comment with a bunch of ego based statements is akin to peacocking. But, like a good researcher, I looked into you, since you claim to be such an expert, and I’m not surprised to see that you don’t have a degree in anything even remotely related to law enforcement, criminal justice, or forensic psychology. In fact, Mr. Wright, you went to school for HR Management, CIS, and Business.
Additionally, your most recent work includes sensationalizing true crime investigations, including active investigations you aren’t involved in. More to my original point, it’s unethical to go on, say, Fox News and speak at length about an active missing person investigation of a highly vulnerable person in which the media intervening could be detrimental to finding her alive— especially as a non-expert. We’ve seen this before: the media gets involved, talking heads speculate, and investigations get detailed because of too much outside intervention. In the digital age, this is an even bigger problem. It’s unethical for anyone with any credibility in forensic psychology to be speaking on cases they aren’t involved in, and is actually specifically outlined in the APA guidelines.
I’m not intimidated by accusations of taking things personally, because unlike you, I actually do have education in this field, and it is incredibly important to me. Use as many court cases as you want; anyone can Google use and AI to formulate a response resembling something that sounds legitimate. Sounds like that’s what you do best.
I think a lot of people would agree with you, Maggie, that the Reid Technique should either be banned or substantially altered. Police officers might counter that it helps them catch a lot of bad guys, which must be a positive. They'd also say that while they may not be trained in forensic psychology, they *are* trained in the Reid Technique! It's a complicated issue I suppose.
Something that’s always bothered me…why force a confession out of someone who’s innocent when this leaves the real criminal to walk about free as a bird?
I suppose there are a number of reasons. Impelled by the advice never to attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance, I suspect the main one is that the officers in question honestly believe they've got their man and just need to squeeze the truth out of him. We're all susceptible to a certain reluctance to think we might have been wrong all along. There are plenty of other possibilities, though, too bleak to think about...
With respect to the Reid technique (I say this as a former Reid instructor), it is antithetical to ‘force’ a confession. The opposite is a key aspect of training, which is to withhold vital details of the crime and allowing the person being interviewed/interrogated to provide those details as a way to corroborate their knowledge of the crime. Any officer who forces a confession is usually untrained in proper techniques. In my experience, forced confessions are easy to detect because they lack the authenticity and propriety knowledge needed.
There are two stages - the interview and interrogation. Not every interview leads to an interrogation, but every interrogation is preceded by an interview. The only time an investigator would move to an interrogation is if enough information was developed to believe there is a reasonable suspicion the person being interviewed committed the crime.