Abstract
The Strategic Use of Evidence (SUE) approach is a framework for planning and executing suspect interviews with the aim of facilitating judgments of truth and deception. US law enforcement officers (N = 59) either received training in the SUE approach or did not. Each officer interviewed a mock suspect (N = 59) who had either committed a simulated security breach or had completed a benign task. The officers who received SUE training interviewed in line with the training: They questioned the suspect systematically, withheld the evidence and critical case information until after questioning, and relied on statement-evidence inconsistency to detect deceit. Consequently, SUE-trained interviewers achieved a higher deception detection accuracy rate (65%) compared to untrained interviewers (43%).
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Notes
We conducted analyses to test if males and females behaved differently in the interview. We found no significant effects.
As with the suspect sample, we conducted analyses to detect effects of interview gender. We found no significant effects. However, because there was a highly unequal gender distribution, these results should be taken with caution.
This is one fewer interview than the total sample of untrained interviewers because of the aforementioned loss of one video file.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the individuals and organizations who assisted us, including FLETC’s Behavioral Science Division, Sujeeta Bhatt, Benjamin Shamash, Megan Bard, Jill Paccione, Joanna Truglio, and Clarissa Tse.
This work is funded by the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group / J-FBI-10-009 awarded to Maria Hartwig. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Government.
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Luke, T.J., Hartwig, M., Joseph, E. et al. Training in the Strategic Use of Evidence technique: Improving deception detection accuracy of American law enforcement officers. J Police Crim Psych 31, 270–278 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-015-9187-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-015-9187-0