A few weeks ago I was certified as an interviewer and interrogator of the Reid Technique. Prior to the class I read the Wikipedia page that called into question the Reid Technique’s validity, specifically concerns over false confessions and methods of defeating or countering the Reid technique.
While in general the article is accurate I noticed there were a few discrepancies. What particularly concerned me was the matter of false confessions. Personally, and I would hope all investigators, would take the matter of a false confession as a serious and unacceptable result of an investigation.
The thing about a “confession” is that it must contain details. Details that only the person who committed the crime would know. This can not also just be one point but a multitude of points that together work to show the suspect of being guilty.
Upon eliciting a confession, I and from my experience any investigator worth the suit they’re wearing, will then get the suspect to specifically lock the themselves down into a detailed account of the crime. If the individual took money from their employer, then questions of how much, where it was spent, how the money left the building, what room the money was stored in, specific dates and times must be answered. If there is video, serial numbers, rfid tags, keypad logs or other evidence this all must correlate with the suspects confession. A innocent person just making things up will very quickly shows themselves to be lying when their account is compared against the rest of the evidence.
Having now taken both the basic and advanced classes on the Reid technique my concerns over it eliciting false confessions have been allayed. No one “thing” convicts a suspect of a crime here in the US, even a confession. Rather it is a combination of points that all work together to show a pattern of guilt. While there are times when a video camera or a massive body of witnesses may provide a strong idea of who in fact is guilty, one can not depend on luck in an investigation but the patterns found in a combination of evidence, interviews, interrogations and the ability to match all of these together.
Pretty interesting stuff man, who certifies in this technique? Is that like a government certification?
The John E. Reid & Associates (http://www.reid.com/) are the ones who do the classes. Out of a class of 160 my boss and I are were the ONLY civilians. Everyone else was either Army, local LE, state LE or Federal investigators for orgs like IRS, TSA, DHS, etc. While I was still with the PD, this was the first cert that pretty much all the senior officers suggested we get. Ironic that I get it now.