The quality of question types in Swedish police interviews with young suspects of serious crimes

Abstract

This study explores how juvenile offenders in Sweden between the age of 15 and 17 are interviewed by police officers when suspected of homicide crimes. The quality of question types was assessed in 47 authentic interviews. The findings show that the police officers used option-posing and suggestive questions most frequently and social pressure was used in three predominating ways: to confront, to challenge and to appeal for a confession. The conclusion is that the police officers’ question style to a large extent contradicts recommendations for how to interview children. There is therefore a need to develop an evidence-based interview practice for interviewing young suspects.

Keywords

Investigative interviewing juvenile offenders homicide crimes

Introduction

A police investigation has the purpose of shedding light on a criminal offence, and interviews with the suspect are at times the only way to discover knowledge about what happened (Gudjonsson and Pearse, 2011; Kassin and Gudjonsson, 2004). A confession from the suspect can therefore be decisive when trying to solve and close a criminal case (Moston and Engelberg, 1993; Moston et al., 1992; Williamson, 1993). However, eliciting a confession can be challenging when the crime is severe (Soukara et al., 2009; Watson, 1990). For instance, suspects may be reluctant to report their participation in serious crimes (Komter, 2003), which may imply that police officers might use coercive methods when trying to receive a confession (Baldwin, 1993; Leo, 1992; McConville, 1992; McConville et al., 1991). For example, Leo (1996) found that the most common techniques when interviewing adult suspects who denied allegations were to investigate the suspects’ interest in confessing. This could be done by confronting the suspects with evidence, identifying contradictions in their statements and undermining their confidence when they continuously denied participation. Kassin et al. (2007) also found that isolation from family and friends and performing the interviews in a small and closed room could pressure the suspect to confess.

However, confessions elicited from the use of such techniques do not necessarily generate reliable and true stories (Kebbell and Hurren, 2006). Rather, as Kebbell et al. (2008) found, a more humane interview style by the police officers can increase the likelihood of a truthful confession. A similar finding was found in Sweden, where adult offenders, who were convicted of murder and sexual offences, confessed to a greater degree when interviewed with a positive, empathic and respectful attitude from the police officers (Holmberg and Christianson, 2002). In addition, a Japanese study has shown that an interview style that focuses on a friendly relationship between the police officers and the adult suspects is more likely to lead to a truthful confession compared with confrontational approaches (Wachi et al., 2014). These findings indicate that the elicitation of a truthful and reliable confession from adult suspects is related to the quality of the interview style (Washi et al., 2016).

When it comes to youths in conflict with the law, studies show that young suspects are in a vulnerable position when being interviewed by police officers (Cleary, 2014; Feld, 2006a; Feld, 2006b), as they are for example more sensitive to suggestive prompts compared to adults (Steinberg, 2004). Consequently, when police officers use coercive methods such as confrontation and pressure when interviewing young suspects (Gudjonsson et al., 2006; Kassin et al., 2010; Moston and Fisher, 2007; Sigurdsson and Gudjonsson, 1996), this can cause false confessions, especially when juveniles are exposed to long and compelling interviews (Kassin et al., 2010; Reyna and Farley, 2006). This is confirmed by studies showing that conducting repeated interviews with children who are alleged victims of crimes can be suggestive in itself and elicit a pressure to disclose. A child who is interviewed over and over again can present inaccurate memory recalls due to such methods. However, the findings on repeated interviews are ambiguous, as open questions that are posted repeatedly can also generate more information (La Rooy et al., 2009, 2010). Research on interviews with children and youths who are witnesses or alleged victims of abuse also show that children can report more accurate and detailed experiences when they are asked open questions in a child-friendly manner that is adapted towards the child’s developmental level and prerequisites (Cederborg et al., 2000; Lamb et al., 2015; Lamb et al., 2007; Orbach et al., 2000).

In conclusion, the overall findings suggests that the information that children and youths disclose in police interviews is dependent on the quality of the police officers’ question types (Dale et al., 1978; Lamb, 1996; Malloy et al., 2011; Orbach and Lamb, 1999). However, it is notable that few studies have explored investigative interviews with children and youths suspected of crime. In one study, where young suspects of sexual abuse were interviewed, the youths confessed more often when they were asked open questions. When they were reluctant to report or confess, the police officers asked more closed questions, such as option-posing and suggestive questions (Hershkowitz et al., 2004). It can also be noted that neither in Sweden, nor internationally, are there general recommendations for how to question young suspects (Lamb et al., 2015), even though police officers can follow the step-wise guidelines in the PEACE model (planning and prepare, engage and explain, account and challenge, closure and challenge as well as evaluation) (Bull, 2010; Milne and Bull, 1999). A standardised manual (Lamb, 1996) is only used in investigative interviews with children who are the alleged victims of abuse (Cederborg et al., 2013) and is not adapted to the specific context of juvenile justice and how to question young suspects (Meyer and Reppucci, 2007; Owen-Kostelnik et al., 2006; Reppucci et al., 2010).

It can be concluded that there is a lack of research, and thus inadequate evidence-based practice, for police interviews with children and youths who are suspected of crimes. Therefore there is a need to increase the knowledge of how children in conflict with the law are actually interviewed by the police. In order to create grounds for the development of best possible practice for police officers when interviewing young suspects, the aim of this study is therefore to explore the quality of police officers’ questions, in relation to the recommendations concerning the best possible practices for interviewing children.

Method

The Swedish legal context

In Sweden, children become legally responsible at the age of 15 (Penal Code (1967: 700), Chapter 1, Section 6). The questioning of children under 18 years of age is regulated in the Preliminary Investigation Ordinance, section 17, which states that the hearing has to be conducted without any harm to the young suspect and that it should be performed by a police officer who is particularly suited for the task. This means that young suspects have the legal right to be respected and treated in a child-friendly manner when they are interviewed by the legal authorities. In Sweden, there is also a Special Act (1964: 167) for Young Offenders stipulating that age has to be considered during police investigations and trial proceedings that concern minors.

Data

The data comes from a larger project consisting of 67 primary investigations of homicide crimes, where children and youths under the age of 18 were accused of murder, manslaughter or involuntary manslaughter, during the period of 1995–2013 in Sweden. In 61 of these 67 cases the suspects were between the ages of 15 and 17, and in six cases the suspects were under 15 years old. Only those cases that include juveniles at the age of legal responsibility (15 years old) were included in this study. In order to be able to analyse the quality of the police officers’ question types, we only included those cases where there were transcribed interviews (see Table 1). Out of the total number of cases (61), 47 cases (43 murder, 3 manslaughters, 1 involuntary manslaughter) were included for the data analysis. However, 14 (23%) had to be excluded, as they just had summaries of the police interviews. This means that it is afterwards impossible to control whether the suspect has been unduly pressured or influenced.

Table 1.

Description of the data.

Primary investigations with:	Tot N (%)	Inclusion criteria
Cases of homicide crimes and suspects under the age of 18	67 (100%)
Cases of homicide crimes and suspect between the age of 15 and 17	61 (91%)	Included for data proceedings
Cases of homicide crimes and suspects under the age of 15	6 (9%)
Included cases with police interviews in dialogue	47 (60%)	Included for data proceedings

Among the cases with transcribed interviews (N = 47), a total of 275 interviews were made by the police officers. Each was interviewed between 1 and 22 times (M = 4.5). Also, among the included cases some interviews were summarised (129 (47%)), but 146 (53%) out of all 275 interviews were transcribed verbatim. This means that almost every other interview was not transcribed. The analysis was made on the first verbatim transcribed interview in each case, which meant that we analysed the second or third interview, except in one case where the sixteenth interview was analysed, as this was the first interview that was available in verbatim form. In total, we analysed 47 interviews (one for each case). The interviews lasted between 5 minutes and 4 hours and 32 minutes (M = 55 minutes). It should be noted, however, that the length of the interview was only stated in 42 of the 47 interviews. Most of the young suspects were males (43 males and 4 females) and almost two thirds of them denied the allegations (29 denied, 15 admitted involvement, 3 did not respond). In more than half of the cases, the suspects were the only perpetrator (26 cases), but there were many cases (N = 21) with several suspects (between 2 and 9 suspects).

The interviews were performed by 73 police officers, 61 male and 12 female, and 27 interviews were conducted by two police officers. In 19 interviews, one police officer performed the interview alone and in one case three police officers conducted the interview (see Table 2).

Table 2.

Description of included interviews.

	N (%)	Sample distribution/information
Cases of homicide crimes and young suspects between the age of 15 and 17	61 (100)
Included cases with interviews transcribed in dialogue	47 (77)
Average repetitions/case	4.6	Min times		Max times
Average repetitions/case	4.6	2		22
Interviews with information about duration	42	No information in 5 cases.
Interview duration on average (in minutes)	63	Min		Max
Interview duration on average (in minutes)	63	5		272
Descriptives about interrogators	73 (100)
Gender descriptives		Male		Female
Gender descriptives		61		12
Interviews conducted by single police officer	19	Male		Female
Interviews conducted by single police officer	19	16		3
Interviews conducted by police officers in pair	27	Male/male	Male/female	Female/female
Interviews conducted by police officers in pair	27	20	7	1
Interviews conducted by police officers in trio	1

The coding procedure

For the purpose of studying the quality of question types, the quantitative analysis was inspired by types of questions defined by Lamb (1996), namely: invitations (I), directives (D), suggestives (S) and option-posing (O-P) questions. Definitions of these categories have been developed and adjusted to a Swedish context by Keselman et al. (2008) and Lindholm et al. (2015). In the interviews studied, the different question types have been divided into three categories: open questions, focused questions and other utterances.

Open questions:

(1) Invitations (I) are utterances, including questions, statements or imperatives, prompting free recall responses from the suspect (e.g. ‘Tell me about…’).

(2) Directives (D). These questions refocus the suspect’s attention on details or aspects of events that have already been mentioned, asking for additional details using ‘Wh-’ questions (e.g. ‘When did that happen…?’).

Focused questions:

(3) Option-posing questions (OP). These questions focus the suspect’s attention on details or aspects that have not previously been disclosed. Here the police officer asks the suspect to affirm, negate or select interviewer-given options (e.g. ‘Do you know…?’).

(4) Suggestive utterances (S) are utterances which assume incident-related information (details, aspects) that have not been disclosed by the suspect. Here the police officer clearly communicates what response is expected (e.g. ‘You forced him to do that, didn’t you?’).

Other utterances:

(5) Summaries (SM) are utterances correctly summarising the information previously provided by the suspect (e.g. ‘You said that…’)

(6) Facilitators (F) are utterances facilitating the turn-taking between the suspect and the interrogators (‘hm’, ‘yes’, ‘no’, echoing the last phrase).

(7) Verbalisations (V) are the interviewer’s verbal ‘translation’ of the suspect’s action response (e.g. ‘like that’, ‘here’, ‘you are pointing at your leg’).

(8) Social Support (SS) refers to supportive comments involving non-suggestive reinforcement. This can be a positive response to the suspect’s narrative or life experience (e.g. ‘I understand it can be hard to remember’) or expressions of empathy in response to a young suspect’s narration (e.g. ‘I understand this is difficult’).

(9) Social Pressure (SP) refers to utterances that include criticism of the young suspect, for example, by being ironic, sarcastic or confrontational (e.g. ‘Don’t try to be smart with me.’).

Analysis

The first step of the data analysis was the quantitative coding of the question types. The findings from that analysis made it clear that the police officers used non-recommended social pressure as a strategy when interviewing young suspects (Kassin et al., 2010). In order to illuminate what types of social pressure the police officers used, we made a second qualitative analysis of all these utterances. This means that this study includes two types of analysis, a so-called mixed method (Tashakkori and Teddlie, 2010).

Quantitative analysis

First, we coded all the questions asked by the police officers throughout the selected interviews (N = 47). Every utterance was coded using one of the three categories of questions: open questions – invitations (I) and directives (D); focused questions – option-posing (O-P) and suggestive utterances (S); and other utterances – summaries (SM), facilitators (F), verbalisations (V) social support (SS) and social pressure (SP) (Lindholm et al., 2015). First, the first author independently coded all questions and utterances in all 47 interviews. Second, every fifth interview (N = 9) was independently co-coded by the third author in order to ensure inter-rater reliability. There was a 91% inter-rater reliability between the two authors. The differences between the two authors concerned how to understand summaries, facilitations and option-posing questions. The final coding was solved through discussion between the two authors.

Qualitative analysis

In the quantitative analysis, 167 out of 6,448 prompts (1%) were coded as social pressure. These 167 prompts were found in 28 of the 47 interviews, with a variation between 1 to 23 times. These prompts were selected for further analysis in order to understand how social pressure was used by the police officers.

In the second step of the data analysis, the first author read and reread the prompts that had been coded as social pressure. The focus was on the content of these prompts and how they were used. The third step was to thematise these prompts. Fourth, the second author independently analysed the prompts and the suggested themes. The first and second authors thereafter discussed the discovered themes and came to an agreement concerning how social pressure was used by the police officers.

Ethical considerations

This research has been approved by the National Ethical Review Board in Stockholm (Dnr 2013/1187-31/10). The ethical guidelines have been followed with special focus on anonymising personal details that can reveal identities, actions and places. The first author made all information anonymous before the second and third author read the interviews. In quotes, the suspect has been named ‘S’, the interrogators ‘I’ and the victim ‘V’ (The Swedish Research Council, 2002).

Findings

The findings are presented in two parts below. The first part is a quantitative description of the question types (Table 3), and the second part consists of the findings from the analysis of how the police officers used social pressure.

Table 3.

The quality of the question types.

		Open questions		Focused questions		Other utterances
	Turns	I	D	S	O-P	SS	SP*	F/SM/V
Including all
Total (n)	11,439	114	2,791	536	5,745	18	167	1,976
%	100	1	24	5	50	0	1	19
Divided into confessions
Total (n)	2,801	12	623	146	1,572	0	28	321
%	100	0	22	5	56	0	1	11
Divided into denials
Total (n)	8,638	102	2,168	390	4,173	18	139	1,655
%	100	1	25	5	49	0	1	19

Open questions: (I) Invitations, (D) Directives; Focused questions: (S) Suggestive questions, (O-P) Option-posing; Other utterances: (SS) Social support, (SP) Social pressure, (F/SM/V) Facilitators, summaries and verbalisations.

*Further analysed inductively.

Type of questions asked

In total there were 11,439 questions asked in all 47 interviews. The police officers used fewer open questions (invitations 114 (1%) and directives 2,791 (24%)) than focused questions, (option-posing 5,747 (50%) and suggestive 536 (5%)). This means that the police officers mainly used non-recommended question types (55%) when interviewing the young suspects (Cederborg et al., 2000; Lamb et al., 1996).

The police officers also used other question types, whereof 18 (0,001%) were about social support and 167 (1%) concerned social pressure. Besides those question types, other utterances (facilitators, summaries and verbalisations) made up 1,976 (19%) of the total number of questions asked.

These results show that the police officers used a considerable number of non-recommended question types, which in turn implies that the young suspects, to a large extent, were asked questions about details they had previously not disclosed. This in turn demonstrates how police officers mainly asked the suspect to affirm, negate or select a given option (option-posing 5,747 (50%)). Regarding suggestive prompts (suggestive 536 (5%)), police officers at times suggested incident-related information that had not been disclosed by the suspects. These prompts were not used to the same extent as option-posing prompts, hence when they were used they communicated responses that the police officers were expecting. They also used directive questions (directives 2,791 (24%)), which can be seen as open questions where the police officers ask for additional details to responses the suspects had previously mentioned, but these were only used about half as often as option-posing questions. Conversely, the police officers very seldom used invitations (114 (1%)), that is, open questions that may result in free recall responses with the highest possibility of accurate information.

Qualitative analysis

It is worrying that the police officers used social pressure as a strategy to elicit information from the young suspects as this type of utterance can have negative consequences for the accuracy of the report (Dale et al., 1978; Gudjonsson et al., 2006; Kassin et al., 2010). The ways the police officers used social pressure were to confront, challenge and appeal for a confession. Each category is described below through several subthemes. Confrontation is defined as a strategy to force the youth to think in a certain way, compile a story or force memories of the crime. Challenging is defined as a strategy where the police officer highlights other witnesses’ divergent views or the suspect’s contradictions during the interviews. Appealing for a confession means that the police officer explicitly urges the suspect to confess.

Confrontation

The example below comes from the second interview with a 17-year-old male suspect accused of a murder associated with robbery. This boy was interviewed five times, and he denied the allegations. In this example the interviewer confronts the youth through a provocation, claiming that he knows the boy is lying and is withholding facts.

Provocation

*I:

We know that you are not telling the truth.

Why would I lie. I would have confessed if I had done something, hadn’t I. You are accusing me of something I have not done.

In the next example, the interviewer uses the gravity of the situation as a confrontational strategy, implying that the youth previously withheld information. The suspect is a 15-year-old boy accused of murder, and the example comes from the second interview.

The gravity of the situation

*I:

You remember very well, you must realise the gravity of the situation, tell me now about, what it is you don’t want to talk about. You must tell sooner or later.

Mmm

*I:

You must tell us about what happened.

Mmm (silence).

The next example comes from the second interview with a 17-year-old boy who was accused of murder. Here it is shown how confrontations can also be used ironically.

Irony

*I:

And if you remember the day after you surely remember the night before too.

/…/

Approximately how many were you? Were there more than three, four, five, six?

Is there supposed to be eight people at his place?

*I:

No, I dont know, I have not been there. He has never invited me.

/…/

This is called selective memory. You remember what you want to remember.

Challenging

The example below is from the third interview with a 17-year-old boy who was accused of murder, which he refused to admit having committed. Here the police officer highlights other witnesses’ divergent views of what happened.

Comparison

*I:

You know we have…we interrogate a lot of people in this investigation and we…what we know at this point, is that your story now which you are providing about what happened on Monday doesn’t actually fit with the others’.

*I:

Can you give an explanation for that?

/…/

*I:

You know where the truth lies.

Yes.

Questioning previous statement

Another challenge was when the police officers questioned the young suspects’ previous statements. In the example below the police officer asked if the suspect was sure about his previous statement. The example comes from the second interview with a 17-year-old boy accused of murder where he denied the allegations.

*I:

You know you hadn’t had any contact yesterday?

Yes.

*I:

Are you sure about that?

Yes, why?

*I:

No, I am just wondering.

/…/

*I:

and after that, you have not been out?

No, I have not been out.

*I:

Are you sure?

Yes, completely sure.

*I:

Are you really sure?

Appealing

When appealing for a true story the police officer usually did so in a friendly manner. The example below is from the third and last interview with a 17-year-old boy accused of murder where he denies the allegations. Here the interviewer appeals by explaining that the suspect will feel relief after he has told what actually happened. The interviewer claimed that the boy was not a bad person, even if he had killed the victim.

*I:

Now you have the opportunity to tell about the matter in this case with V (victim).

Yeah

*I:

Unburden your heart. Because I think, to be honest with you now, I think that what is really hardest for you right now are your feelings of guilt about the situation.

Mmm

*I:

And I can tell you that the absolute best way to free yourself from this is to open up, tell the whole truth, how things happened.

Yes

*I:

Let me put it like this, just because one does a stupid thing in life doesn’t automatically mean that you are a bad person. We all do stupid things of varying degrees in our life, but you are not a bad person because of it. Absolutely not. One can make bad choices…make bad decisions and things like that, however one has to take that and one has to make a fresh start, move on, but in order to move on, one has to put what is in the ruck-sack behind you. You have to lighten up and tell about it.

Discussion

This study explores the quality of question types employed when police officers interview young suspects of homicide crimes. The findings are that the practice of interviewing relies heavily on the use of questions that do not elicit free recall responses. In this study, 55% of the questions asked were option-posing and suggestive questions, that is, not recommended question types. When using such questions there is a risk that only a limited number of details were disclosed and that the responses may have been influenced by the questions asked. This means that the young suspects were exposed to interviews where they were apparently not given the opportunity to freely respond to questions about their guilt (Lamb et al., 2015; La Rooy et al., 2009; La Rooy et al., 2010; Malloy et al., 2011; Orbach and Lamb, 1999).

In addition, the police officers also used non-recommended social pressure as a strategy to elicit information. They confronted, challenged and appealed for details, presumably in order to elicit a possible confession from the young suspects. By using social pressure, the police officers adopted coercive techniques that can cause false confessions from both adults (Leo, 1996; Kassin et al., 2007; Sigurdsson and Gudjonsson, 1996) and young suspects (Gudjonsson, et al., 2006; Kassin et al., 2010; Moston and Fisher, 2007; Sigurdsson and Gudjonsson, 1996). Thus the large amount of option-posing and suggestive prompts, together with coercive utterances, is worrying, as the police officers’ techniques may not result in truthful reports.

The circumstances under which young suspects were interviewed can also be called into question, as the police officers often used repeated interviews that lasted up to 4 hours and most of the young suspects were interviewed by two adult police officers, often males. It is as if their interview style is driven by the ambition to elicit a confession rather than to reveal the truth of what actually happened (Kebbell and Hurren, 2006; Kebbell et al., 2008; Moston and Engelberg, 1993; Moston et al., 1992; Williamson, 1993).

Our findings shed light on the lack of a child-friendly approach that takes into account the young suspects’ rights and specific requirements as stipulated by international and well as Swedish law (Lamb et al., 2015). However, the findings are in line with previous research that states that children are in a disadvantaged position relative to the authoritative adult interviewing them (Cleary, 2014; Feld, 2006a; Feld, 2006b). In Sweden, police officers who interview young suspects in trouble with the law are supposed to adapt their techniques to the offenders’ age and developmental prerequisites. Police officers are also supposed to treat young suspects with respect and to interview them in a child-friendly manner (Special Act (1964:167) for Young Offenders). However, this study shows that the police officers instead made use of their powerful position by using non-recommended strategies (Baldwin, 1993; Leo, 1992; McConville, 1992; McConville et al, 1991).

The conclusions from this study highlight the need to develop an evidence-based practice when interviewing young suspects. Such a manual has been developed both internationally and in Sweden, for interviews with children who are the alleged victims of abuse (Cederborg et al, 2013; Lamb, 1996). Even if it can be a challenging task to interview young offenders who are suspected of serious crimes, such a practice should take into account their vulnerable and disadvantaged position relative the authoritative police officers. Through training, the police officers should be able to adapt their interview style to a more child-friendly approach.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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