Police interrogations - Term Paper Example

There is a clear distinction between using interrogation as a means of truth-seeking and as a means of coercive manipulation to arrive at confession. But this difference is lost on many who do not recognize the value of real police work, which begins with a case and ends with the accumulation of evidence. While there is reason to claim some police interrogation in the 21st century violates this truth-seeking purpose and borders instead on coercive manipulation, by and large police tactics today are founded upon refined psychological theories that relate to criminal behavior and are far more effective at eliciting genuine confessions than any tactics in the history of police work.

American police interrogations have classically been structured, cultured, and practiced as a means of increasing the state’s ability to prosecute a suspect and to undermine his or her ability to craft a robust defense at trial (Leo, 2008, p. 11). The history of interrogations in the United States follows the movement away from an openly “third degree”, inquisitorial model to an adversarial model, which Leo (2008) describes as an era of science and psychology. In the past, when interrogations were even less visible to the public as they are now, harsher techniques were used with great frequency (Leo, 1992).

The demand from the American public to solve crimes at high rates, however, has not changed from previous decades; only now, interrogations have become less about physical coercion and more about psychological manipulation (Leo, 2008). So-called “third degree” interrogation techniques were especially prevalent among law enforcement officials in the first quarter of the 20th century. The term “third degree” is a euphemism for the inflicting of physical and mental pain for the purpose of extracting confession or self-incriminating statements.

The Wickersham Commission, which was founded in 1929 to discover the causes of