Mapping Repeated Interviews Abstract The present study introduces an adaptation of the Griffiths Question Map (GQM; Griffiths and Milne 2006) which extends the chronological, visual map of question types used in an investigative interview to include child interviewee’s responses (through the addition of the Interview Answer Grid, IAG). Furthermore, it provides a rare evaluation of repeated interviews with children. From a sample of transcripts of Scottish repeated interviews with child victims, two ‘good’ and two ‘poor’ first interviews were chosen based on interviewer question types. First and second investigative interviews of these four children were mapped using the GQM and IAG in order to examine across the two interviews the similarity of interviewer and interviewee behaviours and the consistency and investigative-relevance of information provided. Both ‘good’ and ‘poor’ interviews were found to include practices discouraged by interviewing guidelines, which would not have been identified by examining question proportions alone. Furthermore, ‘good’ first interviews were followed by second interviews which began with poor question types, suggesting a possible impact of confirmation bias. Social support was also assessed and found to be used infrequently, mainly in response to the child being informative rather than pre-emptively by interviewers in an attempt to encourage this. Children were also found to disclose throughout their second interviews, suggesting that rapport-maintenance is vital for single and multiple interviews. The use of the GQM and IAG is encouraged as a technique for determining interview quality.

Validation and Calibration of the Spanish Police Intimate Partner Violence Risk Assessment System (VioGén) Abstract This study describes the rationale, development, and validation of the intimate partner violence (IPV) police risk assessment forms of the VioGén System of the Spanish Ministry of Interior (VPR4.0 and VPER4.0), which promote greater predictive effectiveness and an improvement in the IPV law enforcement prevention. A validation study of the mentioned protocols is presented, including inter-observer reliability, estimated by the equivalence or inter-judge reliability method, while the convergent validity of these protocols was calculated with the RVD-BCN protocol. The sample consisted of 6613 new cases of IPV included in the VioGén System over a period of 2 months and which were longitudinally followed up for 6 months. The discrimination indexes are not only the summarized odds ratio (OR), area under the ROC curve (AUC), sensitivity, and specificity, but also the calibration indexes positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV). The results show the suitability of using procedures which, in a coordinated manner, incorporate two risk assessment instruments, one for a first screening assessment and a second one to re-assess IPV danger situations on a regular basis. The values obtained are within the margins reported by different meta-analyses regarding this type of instruments, which supports their use for professional practice.

Missing Children Photograph Appeals: Does the Number of Appeals Affect Identification Accuracy Following a Short Recall Delay? Abstract The study objectives were (1) to determine if there were any associations between the time spent observing fictional appeals and identification accuracy, (2) to establish if the number of missing children photographs observed influences identification accuracy and (3) to determine whether the number of missing children appeals observed influences identification accuracy following a short 3-day delay. A two-stage approach was utilised. Two hundred and forty-two participants observed one, four or eight mock missing children photographs followed by a short word memory distraction task and a target present line-up identification task. The second stage comprised of another target present line-up identification task presented after a short 3-day delay. One-way between-group ANOVAs indicate that observing one missing child photograph has significantly greater overall identification accuracy and lower identification error than viewing four or eight photographs immediately after observing the appeal and following a 3-day delay. Additional analyses found that the identification accuracy was significantly higher immediately after observation compared with the identification accuracy following a 3-day delay. The findings demonstrate the necessity for improving missing children appeals. Due to the exploratory nature of the study, additional research is required to explore these factors further.

Can the Cognitive Interview Reduce Memory Conformity in an Interview Context? Abstract Eyewitness testimony may be contaminated by event-related information shared by other witnesses. The present study aimed to assess the influence of a modified cognitive interview (MCI) on the detrimental effects of what is called memory conformity. Participants watched a videotaped staged event. Immediately after this, they answered 22 questions about the video out loud, either alone or with a confederate who intentionally introduced false information in her answers (i.e., 6 incorrect and 12 confabulated details). A week later, participants were interviewed individually about the video using either an MCI or a structured (control) interview. Results suggested that participants recalled some of the incorrect and confabulated items suggested by the confederate. Those interviewed with the MCI (vs. SI) also reported fewer incorrect details but more confabulated details previously introduced by the confederate. The potential social and cognitive mechanisms underlying the influence of the MCI protocol on the damaging effects of prior co-witness discussions are examined.

The Influence of Familiar and Confident Eyewitnesses on Mock Jurors’ Judgments Abstract We examined whether eyewitness confidence, familiarity with the defendant (defined as number of prior exposures), and eyewitness age (Study 1 only) influenced mock jurors in a murder trial. Participants read a criminal mock trial transcript where the eyewitness reported seeing the defendant once or many times (vs. none) and answered questions relating to the defendant’s guilt, culpability, and the accuracy of the eyewitness’ identification. In Studies 1 and 2 (N = 542 and N = 169, respectively) only confidence influenced jurors’ judgments with more guilt judgments and higher likelihood of identification accuracy when the witness espoused high (vs. low) confidence. Study 3 (N = 179) utilized a stronger operationalization of familiarity by explicitly stating the number of times the eyewitness had seen the defendant prior to the crime (e.g., 0, 10, or 20 times). Mock jurors were more likely to believe that the defendant was guilty when the eyewitness had seen him 10 times prior to the crime compared to zero times. Additionally, there was a trend for more favorable perceptions of the eyewitness as familiarity with the defendant increased. These results suggest that in some cases, familiarity between an eyewitness and defendant can impact mock juror decision-making.

Where Bias Begins: a Snapshot of Police Officers’ Beliefs About Factors that Influence the Investigative Interview with Suspects Abstract The aim of the current study was to obtain a snapshot of police officer’s beliefs about factors that may influence the outcome of the investigative interview with suspects. We created a 26-item survey that contained statements around three specific themes: best interview practices, confessions and interviewee vulnerabilities. Police officers (N = 101) reported their beliefs on each topic by indicating the level of agreement or disagreement with each statement. The findings indicated that this sample of officers held beliefs that were mostly consistent with the literature. However, many officers also responded in the mid-range (neither agree nor disagree) which may indicate they are open to developing literature-consistent beliefs of the topics. Understanding what officers believe about factors within the investigative interview may have implications for future training. It may also help explain why some officers do not consistently apply best practices (i.e. strong counterfactual beliefs) versus officers who reliably apply literature-consistent practices to their interviews (i.e. knowledge-consistent beliefs).

Witnesses’ Verbal Evaluation of Certainty and Uncertainty During Investigative Interviews: Relationship with Report Accuracy Abstract The Enhanced Cognitive Interview (CI) is a widely studied method to gather informative and accurate testimonies. Nevertheless, witnesses still commit errors and it can be very valuable to determine which statements are more likely to be accurate or inaccurate. This study examined whether qualitative confidence judgments could be used to evaluate report accuracy in a time-saving manner. Forty-four participants watched a mock robbery video and were interviewed 48 h later with a revised CI. Participants’ recall was categorized as follows: (1) evaluated with very high confidence (certainties), (2) recalled with low-confidence utterances (uncertainties), or (3) recalled with no confidence markers (regular recall). Certainties were more accurate than uncertainties and regular recall. Uncertainties were less accurate than regular recall; thus, its exclusion raised participants’ report accuracy. Witnesses were capable of qualitatively distinguishing between highly reliable information, fairly reliable information, and less reliable information in a time-saving way. Such a distinction can be important for investigative professionals who do not know what happened during the crime and may want to estimate which information is more likely to be correct.

The Relationship Between Facebook Reactions and Sharing Investigative Requests for Assistance Abstract The use of social media as an investigative tool is widespread by law enforcement agencies. In this article, we review the public requests for investigative assistance posted by different law enforcement agencies across the nation to determine what Facebook reactions are associated with additional shares. Using like, love, sad, wow, angry, and funny clicks as proxies for the emotions community members report feeling, the goal is to provide empirically supported advice to law enforcement agencies about how to set the tone of their requests to reach the widest audience, measured by the number of times the post has been shared. When controlling for the type of crime listed, we found a positive relationship between the number of funny or sad clicks and the number of shares, while those posts that elicit angry clicks were shared fewer times. The strength of the relationships and the implications for law enforcement messaging are discussed.

The Influence of Familiarity Recency and Eyewitness Age on Mock Jurors’ Judgement Abstract The majority of research examining factors that influence jurors where the sole evidence is eyewitness identification focuses on stranger identifications where the eyewitness has never encountered the perpetrator before. However, it also is important to understand how familiarity between the eyewitness and perpetrator may be influential as familiarity is prevalent in criminal cases. Therefore, the current study examined the influence of familiarity recency (i.e., how long ago the eyewitness knew the defendant as a former neighbor 1, 5, or 10 years ago) and age of the eyewitness (25, 50, or 75 years old) on mock jurors’ decision-making. Mock jurors (N = 326) read a trial transcript involving a positive identification from an eyewitness. Neither familiarity recency nor eyewitness age influenced mock jurors’ perceptions of the defendant or eyewitness, or verdict decisions. However, mock jurors’ subjective ratings regarding the familiarity between the eyewitness and defendant were highly associated with mock jurors’ perceptions and verdict decisions. Specifically, higher familiarity ratings were associated with more guilty verdicts, higher guilt ratings, more positive perceptions of the eyewitness, and more negative perceptions of the defendant. This is an important finding as it demonstrates that jurors’ personal perceptions of familiarity are highly influential in familiar eyewitness cases.

What Do Criminal Justice Students Know About Autism? An Exploratory Study Among Future Professionals Abstract The social and communication impairments and other atypical behaviors among those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) make this subset of the population particularly vulnerable. These vulnerabilities also present a separate set of concerns when they have contact with the criminal justice system, typically as victims or witness of abuse, as offenders or suspicious persons, or lost or missing persons. Specific measures must be taken to improve communication and to avoid misinterpreting communication impairments and other atypical behaviors as an indication of a lack of cooperation, being under the influence of substances, or of guilt/lack of remorse. Without the benefit of having basic knowledge and understanding of autism, criminal justice system professionals will struggle with meeting the needs of those with ASD. The current study explored the level of autism knowledge and awareness of among a sample of 400 undergraduate criminal justice students and possible future criminal justice professionals. The results demonstrated that the sample of students had moderate knowledge of ASD, which did not appear to increase with time in program. Those with greater exposure to people with ASD had more knowledge and understanding than those who did not. Recommendations and implications are discussed.