How To Use Open-Ended Questions In Criminal Investigation

Eye-witnesses can become the key evidence to resolving a crime, but investigators have to be careful not to damage the integrity of the witness. One mistake can be enough to raise suspicion to the integrity of the witness statement, and have it all thrown out in court. Witnesses are very susceptible to suggestions, and investigators have to be careful not to give the witness any hints or ideas that will damage the statement. In order to avoide such mistakes, investigators use two methods of questioning the witness, which are Open-ended questions, and Close-ended questions.Open-ended questionsOpen-ended questions are a methods of asking a question to encourage the witness to tell what they saw from the beginning, and all the way to the end without giving them any hints.

With open-ended questions, you can also do the opposite, make them tell the story from the end back to the beginning, and see if what they said matches up with what they said previously. Open-ended questions also leave area for the investigator to ask questions and clarify the information provided by the witness. You as the investigator have the ability to ask questions about specific parts, and even help the person remember more details on that event. You can insert close-ended questions in this process to get a simple"ye" or "no" answer to something, but generally you just let the person talk about what they believe they saw.The downside of using open-ended questions is that it can be very time-consuming depending on the situation, and the witness may not provide all the details that you needed. There could have been many events that occurred before the actual crime occurred, but the witness will have to talk about that because that's what they believe was the start.Another downside is not every witness is capable of recalling the information