Paper Topic:

Police Interrogation

POLICE INTERROGATION

Police interrogations are said to form the vital part of any criminal proceedings . This has been said to be the most effective way to illicit a more detailed as well as vital information from a suspect regading a criminal act which has been done . Apart from this , confessions or interrogations made by the police are said to be important in soving criminal cases qucikly . It also saves the police the hassle of foing extensive work by searching more evidences that are physical interviewing potential witnesses and reviewing documents as well

as applying for serach warrants . In the United States , scholars estimate that somewhere between 42 percent and 55 percent of suspects confess to a crime during interrogation

To give a briefer background , police interrogations were said to be not that intricate and complicated before . History says it that until the early 1900s in the United States , physical abuse was an acceptable -- if not a legal -- method of getting a confession . Confessions obtained by "third degree " techniques -- deprivation of food and water , bright lights , physical discomfort and long isolation , beating with rubber hoses and other instruments that don 't leave marks -- were usually admissible in court as long as the suspect signed a waiver stating the confession was voluntary . Between the 1930s and 1960s , though , a crackdown on police tactics gradually changed the practice of interrogation

However , the intricacies in the police interrogations arise during the existence of a case where the Miranda rights ' have originated . When the case Miranda v . Arizona reached the Supreme Court in 1966 , coercive police interrogation took another blow . According to the case , suspect Ernesto Miranda had confessed to rape and kidnapping after two hours of interrogation , and the appeal to the Supreme Court alleged that Miranda was not aware of his rights to remain silent , which is included in the Fifth Amendment , and to counsel which is included in the Sixth Amendment

The Court ruled in favor of Miranda , and the decision instituted what we have come to know as the "Miranda Rights " To safeguard against a suspect falling into an involuntary confession because he thinks he has no choice but to speak , the police must expressly , clearly and completely advise any suspect of his rights to silence and counsel before beginning an interrogation or any other attempt to get a statement from a suspect . The Miranda decision attempts to eliminate suspect ignorance as a contributing factor to involuntary confessions

In a research , it has been said that interrogators use a nine-step sequence of social influence and techniques of persuasion to systematically weaken suspects ' resistance and to provide face-saving rationales . These nine steps include : directly confronting the suspect about her guilt developing "techniques of neutralization " or psychological themes to justify or excuse the crime interrupting the suspect 's attempts at denial rebuffing the suspect 's explanations or assertions of innocence engaging the suspect if she becomes passive or tunes out showing sympathy and urging the suspect to tell the...

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