I remember reading in the 1990’s about a new way to interview witnesses. The study trained college students with no law enforcement training and seasoned detectives how to use a specific interview technique that elicited more information and more accurate information from eyewitnesses. After receiving the short training, the students and the detectives were asked to conduct interviews using the new technique. The college students faithfully used the techniques they were taught; the detectives, though trained, ignored the techniques they had been taught and interviewed like they always had – the result: untrained college students got more information and more accurate information from eyewitnesses than seasoned detectives.
In an effort to improve witness evidence, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) adopted guidelines for conducting witness interviews that was based on empirical research (Technical Working Group: Eyewitness Evidence, 1999). These guidelines were then distributed to all police departments in the USA in 1999, along with a trainer’s manual.
After 20 years, researchers did a study to see how the guidelines had done in helping interviewers get greater quality of and quantity of information from witnesses. What they found was, essentially, nothing had changed from the old ways – police interviewing had not improved in 20 years because the police did not follow the guidelines and training material available to them:
“Most importantly, the similarity between the current data and those collected 20 years ago is striking. That is, the lack of positive interviewing techniques in our sample of investigators clearly demonstrates a lack of awareness of the NIJ guidelines/reforms and thus a lack of corresponding specific and systematic witness interview training. Namely, in combination with Fisher et al. (1987), our data suggest that police investigators (at least our sample) are not at all informed of currently available information or they are unable or unwilling to use the available information. This is surprising because NIJ guidelines, together with a trainer’s manual, had been disseminated with the objective to improve investigative interviewing in the USA before interviews in our sample were conducted. Our findings are consistent with other data demonstrating that US law enforcement officers have very little knowledge of best practice investigative interviewing guidelines (Wise, Safer & Maro, under review). The police officers surveyed also report that they receive very little training on NIJ guidelines, believe their current practices to be effective and efficient, and have not received adequate explanation why reforms are needed.” Interviewing Behaviors in Police Investigators: A Field Study of a Current US Sample, Nadja Schreiber Compo, Amy Hyman Gregory, and Ronald Fisher, published in May 2010, page 13 http://www2.fiu.edu/~schreibe/SchreiberCompo_Hyman_Fisher.pdf
In a chapter of a book on Investigative Interviewing, researchers from California and Florida are cited for similar findings in the United States, Germany and Canada.
• We note, with a sigh of renewed discouragement, that similar patterns of lesser quality interviewing procedures have been found in more recent interviews conducted by German (Berresheim & Weber, 2003), Canadian (Snook & Keating, 2010), and American police (Schreiber & Fisher, 2005).
• We were discouraged by the quality of interviews, in part, because forensic research scientists have known for a while how to conduct interviews effectively. [T]he enhanced CI, which is described in our “how-to” manual (Fisher & Geiselman, 1992).
• The RAND Corporation (1975) had just completed a survey of law-enforcement professionals and found that 85% of what police do on a daily basis is talk to citizens, whereas only 2% of the respondents had received any formal training on how to interview people.
Interviewing Witnesses and Victims by R. Edward Geiselman & Ronald P. Fisher, University of California, Los Angeles & Florida International University, to appear in: Michel St. Yves (Ed.), Investigative Interviewing: Handbook of Best Practices. Thomson Reuters Publishers, Toronto, 2014
In Arizona, we have pretty much given up on training police officers to interview victims of sexual assault and child molestation appropriately. The protocol in Arizona is that police officers are expected NOT to interview such victims, they are to arrange for special civilian interviewers to conduct "forensic interviews" using the techniques that police should have been using for the last twenty five years.
In an effort to improve witness evidence, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) adopted guidelines for conducting witness interviews that was based on empirical research (Technical Working Group: Eyewitness Evidence, 1999). These guidelines were then distributed to all police departments in the USA in 1999, along with a trainer’s manual.
After 20 years, researchers did a study to see how the guidelines had done in helping interviewers get greater quality of and quantity of information from witnesses. What they found was, essentially, nothing had changed from the old ways – police interviewing had not improved in 20 years because the police did not follow the guidelines and training material available to them:
“Most importantly, the similarity between the current data and those collected 20 years ago is striking. That is, the lack of positive interviewing techniques in our sample of investigators clearly demonstrates a lack of awareness of the NIJ guidelines/reforms and thus a lack of corresponding specific and systematic witness interview training. Namely, in combination with Fisher et al. (1987), our data suggest that police investigators (at least our sample) are not at all informed of currently available information or they are unable or unwilling to use the available information. This is surprising because NIJ guidelines, together with a trainer’s manual, had been disseminated with the objective to improve investigative interviewing in the USA before interviews in our sample were conducted. Our findings are consistent with other data demonstrating that US law enforcement officers have very little knowledge of best practice investigative interviewing guidelines (Wise, Safer & Maro, under review). The police officers surveyed also report that they receive very little training on NIJ guidelines, believe their current practices to be effective and efficient, and have not received adequate explanation why reforms are needed.” Interviewing Behaviors in Police Investigators: A Field Study of a Current US Sample, Nadja Schreiber Compo, Amy Hyman Gregory, and Ronald Fisher, published in May 2010, page 13 http://www2.fiu.edu/~schreibe/SchreiberCompo_Hyman_Fisher.pdf
In a chapter of a book on Investigative Interviewing, researchers from California and Florida are cited for similar findings in the United States, Germany and Canada.
• We note, with a sigh of renewed discouragement, that similar patterns of lesser quality interviewing procedures have been found in more recent interviews conducted by German (Berresheim & Weber, 2003), Canadian (Snook & Keating, 2010), and American police (Schreiber & Fisher, 2005).
• We were discouraged by the quality of interviews, in part, because forensic research scientists have known for a while how to conduct interviews effectively. [T]he enhanced CI, which is described in our “how-to” manual (Fisher & Geiselman, 1992).
• The RAND Corporation (1975) had just completed a survey of law-enforcement professionals and found that 85% of what police do on a daily basis is talk to citizens, whereas only 2% of the respondents had received any formal training on how to interview people.
Interviewing Witnesses and Victims by R. Edward Geiselman & Ronald P. Fisher, University of California, Los Angeles & Florida International University, to appear in: Michel St. Yves (Ed.), Investigative Interviewing: Handbook of Best Practices. Thomson Reuters Publishers, Toronto, 2014
In Arizona, we have pretty much given up on training police officers to interview victims of sexual assault and child molestation appropriately. The protocol in Arizona is that police officers are expected NOT to interview such victims, they are to arrange for special civilian interviewers to conduct "forensic interviews" using the techniques that police should have been using for the last twenty five years.