engleski

Gender Differences in Interview Tactics with Suspects

Police interviewing of suspects is one of the cornerstones of the criminal investigation process, but only recently has it been the topic of research interest. Since there was no published research on suspects’ interviewing in Croatia, the aim of this study was to research self-reported frequency of use of different interviewing techniques and to analyse gender and age differences. Correlational analysis was employed and a questionnaire was designed for the purpose of the study. The participants were 99 police inspectors from criminal police departments representing all Police Administrations in Croatia, of whom 43 were female and 50 were male, with the mean age of 32 years. The three most often used interviewing techniques for both male and female officers are confronting the suspect with evidence of his guilt (the most often used male and the second most often used by female officers), highlighting contradictions in suspect’s statements (the most often used by female and the second by male police officers), and highlighting contradictions with other suspects’ statements (the third most frequently used by both male and female police officers). Gender differences were found in three out of 13 interviewing techniques. The correlation pattern between frequency of use of the various techniques and age and length of police experience, was different for male and female police officers. The main finding is that younger male police officers use accusatory techniques more often than older police officers, independent of their interviewing experience, suggesting that these group is at risk for getting false confessions. The importance of the research is that this is the first attempt to describe investigative interviewing in Croatia. This could further serve for planning the education of police officers in investigative interviewing.

police ; investigative interviewing ; gender differences ; suspects

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