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Because it's effective I guess? A couple hours of successful interrogation can save tens or hundreds of hours of investigation. And one of their main goals is t
by pseudo0 5y ago
Because it's effective I guess? A couple hours of successful interrogation can save tens or hundreds of hours of investigation. And one of their main goals is to elicit information that can be independently confirmed. For example, if someone confesses to a shooting and tells the police where they hid the gun, and the gun is found there, that's a good indication that the confession was probably legitimate.
Edit: Geez, I was just answering the question... At the end of the day, it's up to society to determine whether it thinks the effectiveness of the method is worth the potential moral hazard of false confessions under pressure. In my opinion, there does need to be better policy for police departments to assign little weight to confessions with zero corroboration that cannot even accurately describe the facts of the case.
- phkahler 5y ago>> Because it's effective I guess? So the end justifies the means. I'm not a fan of that philosophy, as it can be used to justify all kinds of things and leads to a lack of integrity.
- throwaway894345 5y agoAgreed, and moreover is there even any evidence that it is effective? Or rather, effective at uncovering the truth as opposed to effective at eliciting a [potentially untruthful] confession?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ashtonkem 5y agoAnd that’s how authoritarian police states are build. One “but it’s effective” and “they’re just criminals” at a time. By the time “good citizens” discover that it’s being used against them too, it’s far too late.
- glitchc 5y agoDoing away with anyone who may possibly commit a crime is even more effective at combating crime than the existing options. Let's go with that. Heck, let's take care of it at birth, most efficient of all! /s
- kwhitefoot 5y ago> Doing away with anyone who may possibly commit a crime That's been tried at various times and places in world history. It doesn't have a good record.
- glitchc 5y agoIndeed, hence the sarcasm.
- Aerroon 5y agoWhat if wrongful convictions based on police officers lying in interrogations penalized the police officer doing interrogations? Do you think the interrogators would still continue using these methods? Eg the police officer that interrogated Terrill Swift will now be held criminally responsible for inducing a false confession.
- pseudo0 5y agoI think better rules on what quality of confessions police and prosecutors take into consideration would probably be sufficient. Eg. if the suspect says "okay, fine, I did it" after hours of interrogation but cannot describe what the victim looked like, what weapon they used, where they hid it afterwards, etc, that confession should be considered near-worthless. The real issue isn't inducing the false confession, it's assigning it such a high evidentiary value and presenting it to a jury out of context.