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Arguments Against Police Deception

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Police officers in the United States have been a part of society for less than 200 hundred years. They have used a variety of techniques to gain a confession during an interrogation. These techniques ranged from physical force and abuse, physical duress, to psychological coercion. The primary strategies police used to use during interrogation involved physical force and abuse to force a confession from a suspect. However, with public outcry and standards that were put in place, police officers have now shifted the techniques they use during interrogation. Now, instead of using force and abuse, these techniques have been replaced by deception and manipulation to gather information from suspects (Leo, 1992). Although the use of deception during …show more content…

In this paper, I will discuss why deception is viewed as an unethical police practice, the guidelines that police officers should follow when using deception, what acceptable forms of deception police should utilize, and how deception and coercion can go hand and hand during police interrogations.
Why is Deception Viewed as Unethical? There are numerous reasons why researchers and citizens in the United States are questioning whether deception is an ethical technique to use during interrogation or not. Deception is used to deceive people, often for personal gain. Police use all different types of deception. An example of deception that police have the ability to use is a false evidence ploy. A couple of examples of this type of deception are telling the defendant that their friend/co-defendant already confessed to the crime or claiming they have DNA evidence from the suspect (Selby 2022). Although this type of deception may seem coercive, it is often viewed as a necessary tactic to obtain voluntary and accurate confessions (Najdowsk & Bonventre, 2014). However, when police use deception as a method …show more content…

There are concerns about if using deception leads the suspect to be coerced into a confession, even if they did not commit the crime. As previously stated, police do not have many guidelines to follow when using deception during an interrogation. This means they have a fine line between positively using deception and negatively using it. This line involves not exploiting the suspect. The negative impacts of deception are detrimental to the police but mostly to the suspect. If a suspect falsely confessions, they can be convicted of a crime they did not do. This can affect their life, work, and their

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PAPER 1: FALSE CONFESSION ASSIGNMENT Legal issues involved in the interrogation of criminal suspects are the leading cause for wrongful conviction of innocent individuals based off of false confessions. The primary motive for police officials is to close a case with a written and verbal confession from a possible suspect. Confessions override evidence if the confession is convincing enough to the jurors. Most people assume that people would not confess to a crime they didn’t commit, but due to the harsh interrogation circumstances, psychological coercion and situation factors, these can influence an innocent individual to confess to a crime they didn’t commit.

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This book begins immediately with some shocking statistics that will allow the police officers in the ethics course to see just how prevalent the code of silence can be. Quinn reports, “only 39 percent of police officers believe fellow officers will report serious criminal violations involving the abuse of authority,” and “52,4 percent of police officers agreed, “It is not unusual for a police officer to turn a blind eye to improper conduct by other officers” (4). The book goes on to discuss why officers partake in the code of silence. A scenario given by the author describes an officer who reports to a domestic violence call and ends up being beaten by the offender. The offender would have killed the officer if it were not for the back up that arrived.

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The police then determine if the suspect is guilty and continuously interrogate, accuse, and even threaten the suspect for hours until they confess, whether they are guilty or not. On many occasions the people who are coerced into false confessions are have severe mental impairments that prevent them from functioning as a normal person with out the impairments would.

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The Innocence Project The term “false confession” means that a person confessed to a crime that he or she did not commit. There are different reasons for this decision; all of them can be divided into external and internal. The first category means the person was forced to confess to a crime because of external circumstances like police officers’ violence, indirect evidences or witnesses’ testimonial. For example, two men Jose Montanez and Armando Serrano “were convicted of a 1993 murder based on the testimony of an incentivized witness who was allegedly fed information about the crime by Reynaldo Guevara, a former Cook County detective” (innocenceproject.org).

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803 Words | 4 Pages

The aspect of psychology and law research from this week is correlated to the week four-course material is most relevant to the topic of interrogations and false confession techniques that are used by the detectives. In the case that was presented in the documentary West of Memphis is an investigation of a failure of justice in Arkansas. The interrogation methods from the detectives lead to a false confession. A false confession is an admission to a criminal act that the confessor did not commit (Greene & Heilbrun, 2014, p. 165).

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1374 Words | 6 Pages

After going through this process, four out of the five suspects ended up confessing to the crime, because they were led to believe they could go home if they admitted they did it. Lastly, coerced-internalized confessions typically occur if the suspect is “anxious, sleep-deprived, confused, and subjected to a highly suggestive interrogation that often includes the presentation of false evidence” (McGrath, ScienceDirect Topics). When a suspect turns to this type of confession, interrogators can spot a weakness present in the suspect and take advantage of it, leading the suspect to be under the impression that

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1020 Words | 5 Pages

A common reason that individuals have confessed to crimes they haven 't committed, is due to being under extreme duress or coerced by investigators determined to get to the bottom of cases. (2) Once an investigator has decided that an individual is guilty, it becomes less about the actual crime and more about this individual molding their idea of what happened to that of the investigators. Investigators will withhold food and water. Sometimes interrogating for hours. (2) As time progresses individuals become more desperate and some individuals will even begin to believe that what investigators are telling them is the truth.

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First, false witnesses are bad in many different ways and can do things to change people's lives. A false witness is a witness that gives a false statement willingly or because he is bribed or blackmailed in a way (O’Grady). This means that anyone can become a false witness and play with the judicial system in a way that usually is not justified or fair. False witnesses are not good to the

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A few changes that can help improve the environment for reducing false confessions is to provide breaks in between the interrogations, or possibly allow interrogations to be four hours or less. By doing so, it will allow the suspect to have a mental break after being interrogated for a certain amount of time. Record the interrogations from the beginning to the end of it, making sure everything said and done in the interrogation room is captured. By recording the interrogation completely, the jury can see how the suspect acted while being interrogated, how the one conducting the interrogation acted, and how the confession came to be. Another change can be to have an adult that has a relation to the vulnerable suspect in question, whether

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Although, this tactic does not always work, it can cause some problems. Officers are supposed to use the tactic when there is a suspected criminal, but if it turns out there is no criminal it can cause many problems. Officers do not need to persuade the innocent because then the cops are just creating crime witch is the opposite of what they are supposed to do. The main point of this article is that it wants to make the structure and the frame work of the entrapment system clearer and more precise. The article identifies ways to make entrapment more stable and clearer.

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This paper is a discussion concerning teleology and deontology in police work. This paper will blend together sources to support the argument that the ethical principles of deontology and teleology can offer important understandings into help creating further ethical police behavior. The paper shows that, despite the significant differences in the application of each ethical view, the two different ethical viewpoints address principles and ideas that officers can utilize as they respond to the ethical challenges and dilemmas that are found while dealing with the public.

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This study examines the relationship between interrogative compliance and false confession. The researchers wanted to see how this information

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Furthermore, there can be several factors at play when a wrongful conviction occurs and each case is unique. Three of the more common and detrimental factors that will be explored in this essay are eyewitness error, the use of jailhouse informants and professional and institutional misconduct. Firstly, eyewitness testimony can be a major contributor to a conviction and is an important factor in wrongful conviction (Campbell & Denov, 2016, p. 227). Witness recall and, frankly, the human emory are not as reliable as previously thought. In fact there has been much research showing the problems with eyewitness testimony such as suggestive police interviewing, unconscious transference, and malleability of confidence (Campbell & Denov, 2016, p.227).

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“Courts have permitted the interrogators to tell the suspect that if he confesses his conscience will be comforted or they will inform the suspect’s cooperation to the court” (Richard 2008). It is unethical to promise and give hope to the suspect that will not be met in order to obtain a voluntary confession which are induced. During interrogation someone may walk in and hide his identity like being a police officer, while acting like someone else and promise the suspect that he or she is here to help and they are in good hands. Doing this is violating the rights of the suspect and should be taken into consideration, because it inflicts the mind of a suspect. If the suspect is going to confess it should be voluntary not being forced to “voluntary

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Introduction Significance of Interrogation Interrogation is a socially seen in multiple lights for different countries globally. The range of views can go from questioning to violence to get answers. Where some countries lie really is determined by the government control, crime rates, and the ethical boundaries of that country. Purpose of Investigation

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