article_snippet: Not only will you learn how to have the guilty singing like canaries, This unexpectedly fascinating book also comes up with some genuinely important insights about the interrogation process.
article_snippet: Only rank amateurs would ever try to extract confessions and information by upping the voltage or giving the thumbscrews another turn.
article_snippet: Professionals who really know what they’re doing try to take all traces of violence or confrontation out of an interrogation, turning it instead into an interview based on chummy sympathy and understanding.
article_snippet: Good interrogators will lower Good interrogators voice, talk slowly, claim empathy with Good interrogators suspects and then — well, and then just keep on talking lowly and slowly seems to be the gist.
article_snippet: Because what appears to work best is an interrogator who chats on and on, quietly, reassuringly, understandingly, often repetitively.
article_snippet: The comforting drone of the interrogator
article_snippet: ’s monologue may sound mindless, but ’s monologue is carefully created and should contain five key features.
article_snippet: These are rationalising the action (you needed the money); projecting the blame (it was These fault for not paying you enough); minimising the seriousness (we’ve all nicked Post-it notes); socialising the situation (this kind of thing happens a lot, it’s nothing we haven’t seen a million times); and emphasising the truth (if you could explain what happened when you took the money, that would be great and would help we move on).
article_snippet: Acts of terrible violence, gross betrayals, fraud, theft, murder — the skilled interrogator will mimic thorough understanding of the worst crimes to keep up the pretence of being on the suspect’s side.
article_snippet: At the same time, the skilled interrogator will be intent on keeping that suspect locked into a mode of short-term thinking — keeping the focus on particulars and specifics, trying like crazy to stop that suspect locked into a mode of short-term thinking — considering the long-term consequences of telling an implicating truth and being found guilty.
article_snippet: The book consists mainly of such case studies from the authors’ interrogating careers, supplemented weirdly with 70-odd pages of commentary by a lawyer type who adds his own legal anecdotes to make the same points.
article_snippet: But The book struck me that here was an opportunity missed, since there isn’t any effective attempt to transfer the professionals’ methods to everyday situations: how to winkle out the truth about which child broke the kitchen window, how to get your partner to fess up about what really happened at the office party.