Friday, July 26, 2013

How to Improve Interrogation Skills

Interrogation serves as an important skill for people in law enforcement professions. Police officers must interrogate subjects in order to get them to sign confessions. Signed confessions help close cases and often lead to a subject "taking a deal," or agreeing to terms of jail time, instead of going to court. Successful interrogations involve an interrogator who controls the environment and conversation until a suspect has no choice but to confess his crime.

Suggestions

  1. Prepare for all of your interrogations by collecting information on the suspect and case. If you are interrogating a suspect on charges of possessing illegal drugs, run a background search on the subject to determine his job, place of residence, criminal history and marital status. Collect the facts on the case, such as type of drug collected and the amount of the drug. The more information you have, the better your interrogation.
  2. Create an appropriate interrogation environment. The setting should be private, sound-insulated and free of any distractions such as windows, phones, televisions and intercoms. The environment must be one that is within your control. If you lose control of the environment, you lose control of the interrogation
  3. Learn how to convince people to give you information by understanding concepts of confession. Concepts of confession include decreasing guilt or blame for the suspect and appealing to a person's desire to be understood or his desire for a positive outcome. One way of decreasing guilt involves acting as if you understand why the suspect committed a crime. You might say something such as "I know you have a hard time dealing with your family. It's only natural to want stress relief" to a subject who possessed illegal drugs.
  4. Develop your ability to persuade. You can develop this ability by completing as many interrogations as possible or by practicing on friends or strangers. Get your friends to tell you their guilty pleasures or get strangers to tell you how many people with which they have entered a physical relationship.
  5. Create interrogation plans. Most plans involve confronting the subject and gradually removing a suspect's ability to deny something. You then present your argument or reduce a subject's guilt until she confesses. Your plan should be tailored to each subject. For a woman who possesses drugs, for instance, you first confront her with the charge by telling her the drugs were found in her purse. Remove her ability to deny that the drugs were hers by explaining that no one else had access to her purse and that her friend admitted he had seen her take drugs. Reduce her guilt by acting as if you understand her reasoning until she confesses.
  6. Learn to build relationships during an interrogation. Keep your suspect as the main focus and build his trust by asking him personal questions or relating to him. You might find out he has a dog, and start talking about how much you love taking your dog on walks. To build relationships well you must learn to assess a person's viewpoint and show that someone understands life from his perspective. Listen for clues to someone's viewpoint. If he says he was poor growing up, he has a different viewpoint than someone who grew up in an affluent suburb.


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