FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY: THE REID TECHNIQUE

Interviews; interrogation; policing; false confession; punishment

Jan 28, 2026

It was published as long ago as 1963 but remains the famous manual in the history of interrogation. Criminal Interrogations and Confessions hit the bookstores of an expectant world more than sixty years ago. The authors were Inbau and Reid. Inbau evidently needed a better agent: every law-enforcement agent in the western world has heard of ‘The Reid Technique’, but ‘The Inbau Technique’ is unknown. It has been called the ‘benchmark’[i]. It has also been called ‘really horrible’.

In fact, it’s not really one technique: it’s three. Or, at least, one technique with three separate components. Interrogators start with factual analysis, move on to an interview, and end with a flourish - full interrogation. Let’s take a look at each one quickly. It’ll be interesting and may help you prepare for your next visit to the interrogation room.

With luck, if ever you are unfortunate enough to become a ‘person of interest’, you won’t reach the interrogation stage. You may be eliminated before you get there. Indeed, bearing in mind that you are a law-abiding subscriber to the Crime & Psychology newsletter, and therefore a sterling example of upstanding behaviour all round, you almost certainly will. You can think of each component as a step on the way. It helps rule out the innocent while ruling in the guilty. You definitely want to get ruled out. In the final stage, the investigator brings to bear the full force of the Reid Technique, and, trust me, it’s best to avoid that.[ii]

When I say ‘the full force’, I’m not joking. To be subject to the Reid Technique is no small matter. For sure, it is sometimes deceptive, sometimes manipulative, and sometimes so high-pressure you could use it to get exhaust-smoke off the walls of a Glasgow tenement.

The process starts with:

Factual Analysis

This is what we might usually think of as ‘proper police work’. Officers study the evidence they have available and develop as accurate a picture as they can of the incident in question. This means developing leads, eliminating the least probable suspects, interviewing those who are left, and figuring out the best strategies for interrogation. You see a lot of this kind of thing on police shows.

Next comes:

The Behaviour Analysis Interview (BAI)

This is not a full-blown interrogation, at least not yet. That’s reserved for the most suspicious of the suspicious. Rather, the BAI is a means of establishing, to the interrogator’s satisfaction, whether the suspect is lying.

First of all, the suspect must be isolated. ‘The principal psychological factor contributing to a successful interview or interrogation,’ says the manual, ‘is privacy—being alone with the person during questioning’.[iii] Isolation of course has a number of psychological effects. Perhaps most prominent among them is a feeling of helplessness and dependence on the interrogators. Even access to the very stuff of life - warmth, food, drink - may be implicitly or explicitly outside the suspect’s own power.

Officers may ask a few background questions and observe how the suspect responds. They are trying to identify baseline behaviour. They are likely to employ so-called ‘behavior provoking’ questions. The idea is to see whether the suspect behaves differently in response. What are the symptoms of truthfulness or deception? How does the suspect react when stressed? All of this makes it more difficult for the suspect to geta way with lying later on.

If the suspect is considered guilty, it’s time for the interrogation proper. Guilt now established (at least in the interrogator’s mind) the aim is simply to elicit a confession. The interrogator will not be gentle about it. One commonly-used if ugly phrase is ‘guilt presumptive’. The interrogator acts as an accuser.[iv] If you are unlucky enough ever to find yourself at the wrong side of the table, the investigator will inform you that there is no doubt about your guilt. You know it: they know it. All anyone wants from you are those three little words that mean the world: ‘I did it’.

You will have noticed the major, controversial assumption of the BAI: that the interrogator is capable of telling if and when you are lying. This is far from a given. Psychologists have found laypeople to be able to detect deceit about 54% of the time (slightly better than guesswork); professionals slightly more often.[v] In fact, as one professional writes, ‘virtually no one [ ] can determine a person’s guilt through the interviewing process at the heart of the Reid approach’.[vi] That’s a pretty damning assessment of a widely-used tool.

The interrogator may not necessarily come across as unpleasant: just firm, patient, and unrelenting. His or her intention is – as slowly as necessary – to make you more and more comfortable with the prospect of confession. He or she may not manage to make you feel good about it exactly…but you may end up with the sense that, well, it’s always better to get these things off your chest.

Boxing metaphors sometimes work well here. Think Mexican style – unflashy, slow, and remorseless, the interrogator grinds the suspect down and make them believe that, ‘irrespective of their factual innocence, they are guilty’.[vii] And if boxing metaphors don’t work for you, never fear - that’s the only one in this newsletter.

The interrogation is usually said to have nine ‘steps’. Perhaps this is an ill-chosen term, since it implies a specific chronological order. You will notice that not every step quite fits.

The Nine Steps

If you are the suspect, and you have made it this far, your life, in the short-term at least, is only about to get worse. You’re going to encounter some fairly intense psychological pressure. The interrogator, remember, is convinced by this point that you are definitely guilty. They present a monologue. You may try to interrupt or explain. They’ll be having none of it. Focused as a sheepdog rounding the flock into the pen, the interrogator just wants to lead you into an admission. There may be lies, threats, leading questions or inducements on the way. Probably you’ll wind up facing two options. One will be dubious, morally speaking. The other will be really dubious. Your decision is essentially foregone – but, either way, you admit to the crime.

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Here are the nine steps:

Step 1 – is a ‘direct, positively presented confrontation’[viii]. The interrogator tells the suspect that the evidence clearly indicates guilt. There’s no doubt about it: It’s not even up for debate. The only reason for the interrogation is to clear up the matter of why the suspect did what they did.

Step 2 – is ‘theme development’. The interrogator tries to shift the blame. Perhaps the suspect has a reason, or at least an excuse. The interrogator can conjure up with a rationalisation, perhaps, and offer it to the suspect like bait. They may even conjure up several, in order to see which ones work and which ones do not.

Step 3 – is where we start to lose chronology. This step is to do with handling denials. The interrogator must discourage the suspect from denying guilt. The more often a suspect says they did not commit a crime, the easier it becomes.

Step 4 – involves overcoming objections. The suspect is likely to say something. Perhaps he will claim that he’d never commit an armed robbery, because he is a pacifist. Well, says the interrogator, perhaps you didn’t load the gun. That would certainly be a noble step to take. We can all empathise with that. Remember Graham Chapman in Monty Python? ‘I mean, how many of us can honestly say that at one time or another, he hasn’t set fire to some great public building? I know I have!’

Step 5 – At this point, the suspect may begin to close down like an introvert at a party. The interrogator should do whatever is necessary to make them comfortable with a confession. They should assure them of their sincerity and perhaps even come and sit next to the suspect, the way friends do.

Step 6 – Now the suspect may become tense. Maybe he’ll start to weep. Tears are taken as a sign of guilt. The remorseless interrogator moves on, trying to reduce the crime to its basic elements and make sure that it seems as justifiable and understandable as possible.

Step 7 – is called the ‘alternative question’. The suspects gets a choice between two options. One is more desirable or socially acceptable than the other. Whichever one the suspect chooses, he has admitted his guilt.

Step 8 – The interrogator uses further questioning to obtain more, finer, details of the crime. Especially valuable are facts that only the actual criminal could know.

Step 9 – The interrogator writes down the suspect’s admission and makes them sign.

That bit about weeping really shows how intense the whole process is. For sure, it is a tough experience to live through. Indeed, when people object to the Reid Technique (and they really do) it’s usually on exactly that basis. Torture – as we know – is extremely efficient when it comes to producing false confessions. Some say the Reid Technique has produced more than its share.

Naturally, this is a bone of contention. Supporters claim that false confessions come about only under unusual circumstances. They are not integral to the technique, Rogue interrogators may occasionally employ methods that aren’t endorsed in the handbook and not part of their training (which explicitly tells them to avoid manipulative tactics). Such methods include victim-blaming and minimising the seriousness of the offence. However sternly they may have been warned, though, it seems that interrogators trained in the technique are nevertheless more likely than others to use manipulative methods. That’s no great surprise, when we consider the rather Machiavellian appearance of the entire affair. False confessions are no doubt a special danger when the subjects are children or juveniles.

Of course, it is police officers on the ground who actually use the Reid Technique. They are commonly task-oriented people who want results. They tend to be of the opinion that psychologists’ experiments are all very well, but psychologists are not in the business of catching bad guys and allowing law-abiding citizens to sleep safely in their beds at night. The police officers I have spoken to have tended to consider their own work considerably more important than mine, and who am I to say otherwise?

Would you like more about police interviews and false confessions in the near future? Crime & Psychology is here to cater to your every whim, you know that. Look out for another newsletter on exactly that topic soon. In the meantime, please bang a bright blue button below. You know it makes sense!

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