Confidently Wrong: Police Endorsement of Psycho-Legal Misconceptions

Abstract

Public beliefs about psychological issues relevant to the legal system have been demonstrated to often be misconceived, but the endorsement of such beliefs in law enforcement samples is largely unknown. This study was the first to compare psycho-legal beliefs between law enforcement officers and the general public in the UK. Participants were presented a 50-item questionnaire measuring five psycho-legal topics; police procedures, courts, tough on crime, mental illness, and memory and cognition. Despite direct involvement and relevant experience, law enforcement officers endorsed just as many empirically contradictory beliefs as those who were not law enforcement officers. Further, law enforcement officers were more confident in their responses. This research has implications for identifying areas of limited knowledge within police samples that can be targeted by police education.

Appendix

Full set of counter-empirical beliefs from psycho-legal beliefs questionnaire, broken down by sub-scale. For background review of the literature supporting each of these statements as misconceived, please refer to Shaw and Woodworth 2013.

Police Interrogations and Procedures

• 1 Good cop/Bad cop is an effective means of truth-seeking

• 2 People are not good at detecting lying

• 3 The ultimate goal of any interrogation should be gaining a confession

• 4 People only confess when they have actually committed the crime they are being charged with

• 5 Pressuring individuals to confess is the best way to find out the truth

• 6 Police can tell when a suspect is lying

• 7 When people lie, they look up and to the left

• 8 Most police have received training on how to deal with mentally ill victims/offenders

• 9 In-person lineups are the best way for police to narrow down a suspect

• 10 Most guilty suspects do not lie in interrogations

Courts

• 1 Eye-witnesses are always the most reliable source of case-related information

• 2 Eye-witnesses are not the most important piece of evidence in most convictions

• 3 Most Judges and Jurors fully understand court instructions

• 4 Judges and Jurors are good at remembering all the details mentioned during a trial

• 5 The Insanity Plea is typically used by offenders who are trying to avoid jail

• 6 Judges are good at detecting deception

• 7 DNA evidence is all that is needed to convict an individual, because it proves he/she was at the scene

• 8 Incarcerated offenders usually have access to education while imprisoned

Mental Illness

• 1 Most mentally ill individuals are violent

• 2 Most individuals in incarcerated settings are mentally ill

• 3 The courts know how to effectively deal with mentally ill suspects/victims

• 4 All offenders have access to appropriate rehabilitation services

• 5 Upon release, most offenders are provided with help they need to reintegrate into the community

• 6 All Psychopaths are criminals

• 7 All serial-killers are Psychopaths

• 8 All imprisoned offenders have major mental disorders

Tough on Crime

• 1 Sentencing offenders to Prison/Jail is a good way to punish them

• 2 Individuals are less likely to offend again if they have been incarcerated in a prison/jail

• 3 Imprisonment is the best way to deal with offenders

• 4 Diversion to community service work instead of imprisonment is not good

• 5 Individuals who are granted the insanity plea, and are mandated to treatment instead, are 'getting off easy'

• 6 Most incarcerated offenders are reconvicted

• 7 Threatening offenders with jail terms is an effective crime deterrent

• 8 Capital Punishment (the death sentence) is not an effective way to deter criminal activity

• 9 The way we currently deal with offenders is very good

• 10 We need to be "tough on crime", by giving convicted felons harsher punishment

• 11 The death penalty is an effective means of reducing local crime rates

• 12 Severely mentally ill adult offenders should be treated judicially the same as minors

• 13 Often, minors between the ages of 13-18 should beheld fully responsible for their actions

• 14 Adult mentally ill suspects should be treated the same as normal suspects

Memory and Cognition

• 1 Memory is like a video-camera

• 2 All memory is better for exciting events

• 3 People can have "photographic" memory

• 4 If you are the victim of a violent crime, your memory for the perpetrators face will be perfect

• 5 Only few individuals have bad memory

• 6 When there is a gun present, victims are better at remembering the details of the event

• 7 We never forget the source of our knowledge

• 8 People cannot have memories of things that never actually happened

• 9 We can typically remember things that we did not attend to

• 10 Accurate memories of childhood sexual abuse usually arise years after the abuse