Innocent people are locked up and convicted of crimes more often than you may think. One of the most mysterious reasons this happens is that people confess to things they didn’t do. This may seem incomprehensible, but the fact is that law enforcement has gotten better and better at using psychological methods combined with false evidence to elicit confessions — even though many studies show that this method leads to false confessions. This deception is incredibly coercive, and, as we will see, wildly dangerous, both to the suspect and to the investigation itself.
SHOW SOURCES & SUPPLEMENTALS
The Social Psychology of False Confessions: Compliance, Internalization, and Confabulation, Saul M. Kassin & Katherine L. Kiechel, 1996
The Psychology of Confession Evidence, Saul M. Kassin, 1997
The Psychology of Confessions: A Review of the Literature and Issues, Saul M. Kassin & Gisli H. Gudjonsson, 2004
Investigating True and False Confessions Within a Novel Experimental Paradigm, Melissa B. Russano, Christian A. Meissner, Fadia M. Narchet & Saul M. Kassin, 2005
On the Psychology of Confessions: Does Innocence Put Innocents at Risk? Saul M. Kassin, 2005
Custodial interrogation, false confession and individual differences: A national study among Icelandic youth, Gisli H. Gudjonsson, Jon Fridrik Sigurdsson, Bryndis Bjork Asgeirsdottir & Inga Dora Sigfusdottir, 2006
Police-Induced Confessions: Risk Factors and Recommendations, Saul M. Kassin, Steven A. Drizin, Thomas Grisso, Gisli H. Gudjonsson, Richard A. Leo & Allison D. Redlich, 2010