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Best practice eyewitness interviewing mnemonics have not been tested with linguistically diverse samples. Cognitively complex mnemonics may overload non-native speakers’ cognitive resources, which are already engaged in speaking a non-native language. Social facilitation mnemonics may help non-native speakers, who might be hesitant to report details. The current study tested the reverse order mnemonic (cognitively complex) and a set of introductory instructions (social facilitation) compared to control interviews among native and non-native English speakers. Native speakers provided more details than nonnative speakers, particularly in the control interview condition. Both the reverse order and control conditions elicited newly generated details because of repeated questioning. Accuracy rates were comparable across language and interview conditions. Future research should develop an interviewing protocol that is sensitive to the challenges faced by nonnative speakers.

Alcohol-intoxicated suspects’ confessions are admissible in U.S. courts; however, it is unknown how jurors evaluate such confessions. Study 1 assessed potential jurors’ perceptions of intoxication in interrogative contexts. Many respondents were unaware that questioning intoxicated suspects and presenting subsequent confessions in court are legal, and respondents generally reported they would rely less on intoxicated than sober confessions. In Study 2, potential jurors read a case about a defendant who had confessed or not while sober or intoxicated. Participants who read about an intoxicated defendant perceived the interrogation as more inappropriate and the defendant as more cognitively impaired than did participants who read about a sober defendant, and as a result, they were less likely to convict. Furthermore, intoxicated confessions influenced conviction decisions to a lesser extent than did sober confessions. Findings suggest that investigators might consider abstaining from interrogating intoxicated suspects or else risk jurors finding confessions unconvincing in court.

Police commonly interview intoxicated suspects. This is concerning when suspects are innocent because intoxication often leads to a higher risk for impulsive decision making and reduces inhibition. However, the manner in which intoxication affects people's reporting of unethical or criminal actions carried out by themselves or others is unknown and was thus addressed in the current study. Participants (N = 116) were randomly assigned to one of six conditions based on a 2 (transgression: self, other) × 3 (alcohol condition: low-to-moderate intoxication, placebo, sober-control) between-participants design. After drinking their assigned beverages, participants were asked to disclose a transgression. No main effect of alcohol emerged. However, the odds that participants would report a transgression were significantly higher if they were asked to report a personal, rather than someone else's, transgression. Overall, low-to-moderate intoxication did not increase the likelihood of sensitive information disclosure in this initial study, but additional research is needed.

Intoxicated witnesses are common, making it important to understand alcohol's impact on witness accuracy and suggestibility. Participants assigned to an immediate retrieval condition encoded and recalled in one of the three intoxication conditions: sober control, placebo, or intoxicated. Participants in the delayed retrieval condition were assigned to encode in one of the three intoxication conditions, returned a week later, and were assigned to retrieve in one of the three intoxication conditions. Intoxication condition at encoding was fully crossed with intoxication condition at retrieval in the delayed condition. Participants encoded a mock crime video and retrieved via a forced-choice test, with answers already circled (purportedly by a prior participant); half of the precircled responses were incorrect. When recalling after a delay only, intoxication at encoding increased agreement with incorrect suggested answers and decreased accuracy. Results suggest intoxicated witnesses may benefit from being interviewed immediately rather than after a sobering delay.

Interpreters play an important role in the criminal justice system, yet little is known about the way interpreters are used. This survey of U.S. law enforcement (N = 299) assessed practices and perceptions regarding interpreter use during interviews with nonnative English speakers. Investigators reported using colleagues more often than professional interpreters, using interpreters more often with suspects and in certain crimes (e.g., domestic violence), and that interpreters are usually at least partially informed about case facts prior to translating. Investigators responded to experimental vignettes, and results indicated they were more likely to seek and obtain interpreters when an interviewee has lived in the United States for fewer years; however, the language spoken and the interviewee's role (e.g., witness vs. suspect) did not affect decisions to request an interpreter. Several avenues for future experimental research are identified and discussed, including interpreting over the phone and interpreter susceptibility to biases.

Rapport building is a widely recommended investigative technique that sometimes improves eyewitness recall. However, a clear understanding of how rapport impacts witness recall is lacking. We explored benevolence as a mediator between rapport and eyewitness recall while fixing the pre‐interview interaction to 3 min. Further, we explored whether rapport would lead to benevolence transferring to a subsequent unrelated task. A total of 109 participants viewed a mock crime and were interviewed about the crime either with or without rapport. Afterward, participants were asked to volunteer for a future research opportunity. Results indicated that rapport participants reported higher benevolence than control participants. Additionally, rapport participants volunteered to help the investigator more often than control participants. Exploratory factor analysis extracted two "benevolence" factors: (1) Effortful informativeness and (2) positive and rewarding. Our findings have implications for real‐world investigators who may appeal to witnesses' desire to be helpful and their resultant sense of satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This archival study was the first in Sweden, and the first outside of the US and the UK, to apply the (Kelly et al., Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 9, 165–178, 2013) taxonomy of interrogation methods framework to repeated police interrogations of adult suspects in high‐stakes crimes. Audio/video recordings (N = 19) were collected from the Swedish Police Authority of repeated interrogations of three suspects in three criminal cases. The interaction between interrogators and suspects were scored according to the taxonomy framework (Kelly et al., Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 9, 165–178, 2013; Kelly et al., Law and Human Behavior, 40, 295–309, 2016). First, there was an association between the use of different domains. Rapport and relationship building was moderately and negatively associated with confrontation/competition and presentation of evidence. Moreover, confrontation/competition was moderately and positively related to emotion provocation and presentation of evidence. Second, changes were observed during the interrogations. Presentation of evidence was lower in the beginning than in the middle block. Suspect cooperation was higher in the beginning than both the middle and end blocks. Third, an ordered logistic regression showed that rapport and relationship building were associated with increased suspect cooperation, and confrontation/competition and presentation of evidence were associated with decreased cooperation. The study's results are mostly in line with other taxonomy studies on high‐stakes crimes from the US and the UK. The findings are discussed in light of theoretical frameworks, empirical findings, and current police practice. We also highlight the need for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alcohol-related crimes are very common globally, including in Scandinavia. Despite this, no survey to date has examined the prevalence of alcohol- and drug-intoxicated suspects in Sweden specifically, or which procedures police use when interacting with this suspect group. Given the current lack of (inter)national policy guidelines on how to interrogate intoxicated persons, it is important to examine law enforcement's contact with this potentially vulnerable group in different contexts. This was the aim of the present study. Data were collected via an online survey sent out to Swedish police investigators and 133 officers responded in total. A large majority (87%) of responses indicated that it was common or very common to encounter intoxicated suspects, but findings also suggest that police departments differ in their procedures for when and how to conduct investigations and interviews involving drunk suspects. Our findings support the need for (inter)national guidelines on how to interview intoxicated suspects and the need for more scientific studies on how alcohol affects suspect's memory and decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]