A criminal confession typically ends in conviction, raising a critically important question: Why do suspects decide to confess to their guilt against their own self-interests? The authors of this chapter answer this question by reviewing a large body of theoretical and empirical research related to decision-making involving confessions. Major topics covered include the distinction between different types of confessions, the Reid technique, Miranda waiver decisions, psychological and dispositional vulnerabilities that encourage a confession decision, and interrogation reforms and their impact on confessions and interrogations. The core message of the chapter is that the dominant method of police interrogation used in North America relies on well-established social influence tactics that cause suspects to perceive a confession as a rational decision under the circumstances. The authors examine research involving these tactics and their effects on interrogations and confessions, along with laws and policies that regulate interviews and interrogations of suspects in custody.

Chapter 3 delves into commonly used police interrogation techniques in the United States, such as behavioral analysis approaches to interrogation (the Reid technique) and other rapport-based methods featured in the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG) Report (2016). This chapter focuses on some of the interrogation methods used by police, law enforcement agencies of the United States federal government (e.g., FBI, DEA), and the military to interrogate custodial suspects and evaluates how these methods fit with the Miranda rights and a suspect’s ability to invoke counsel in a custodial setting. How interrogators approach the Miranda rights stage of an interrogation across the book’s corpus, and potentially across interviewing styles, provides insights into the possible connection between the law and how interviewing styles are used and implemented in the United States. Chapter 3 also raises additional considerations when discussing any interrogation or interviewing style, in light of current United States law.

Shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma struggles to find a solid scientific foundation, largely because of a circularity confound, the same diagnostic features under study serve as the basis for categorising cases for research purposes. In an attempt to overcome this circularity, researchers have turned to confessions as a sorting criterion in the research, under the belief that confessions are independent of the diagnostic features and hence not subject to circularity. However, none of the research examines the nature and reliability of the confessions, or the interrogations that produce them; they simply accept the confessions as true, reliable, and independent. Research on interrogations and false confessions, however, along with extensive and wholly consistent anecdotal evidence, strongly suggest that SBS/AHT confessions are largely if not entirely produced by interrogator reliance on the diagnostic findings. That reliance undermines both the independence of the confessions, and hence their ability to break free from circularity, and the reliability of these confessions as a group. On the current state of knowledge, confessions cannot be relied upon to substitute for science to support the SBS/AHT hypothesis.

Doctors and prosecutors who defend the diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome (SBS) point, among other things, to the many confessions obtained from parents and other caregivers as evidence of the reality of the diagnosis. Drawing on the existing social science research, this chapter examines the questions of (1) how, if at all, interrogations of those suspected of injuring or killing a child are conducted differently than other interrogations, and (2) what, if anything, would render such suspects more or less vulnerable to confession (true or false). The chapter examines how interrogations are typically conducted, and the primary reasons suspects confess, keeping in mind that their confessions can be either true or false. In the end, this chapter concludes that suspects in alleged shaken baby cases are arguably more vulnerable to false confession than those suspected of other crimes, and accordingly one cannot assume the reliability or truthfulness of confessions in these cases.