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Oral Presentation: For the Record: Assessing force-level variation in the transcription of police-suspect interviews in England and Wales

22 June, 2022 @ 11:00 am - 11:20 am

Title: For the Record: Assessing force-level variation in the transcription of police-suspect interviews in England and Wales

Abstract:

Recordings of police-suspect interviews in England and Wales are rarely played in court, despite being a key evidence source. More often, interviews are presented in the form of a ROTI (Record of Taped Interview) transcript. However, research (Haworth, 2018; Richardson et al, 2022) has shown that significant alterations can occur as the interview is converted from audio into a transcript. Furthermore, no knowledge exists as to how much variation exists between individual police forces regarding ROTI production.
This paper forms part of a wider project examining ROTI transcription practices. Freedom of Information requests were sent to all English and Welsh forces containing questions relating to current ROTI transcription practices and transcriber training. The questions facilitated an assessment of both the level of variation between forces, and whether specific ROTI transcription problems can be linked to higher-level police processes. The findings illustrate that there are numerous differences between individual forces regarding both ROTI production and training procedures. The findings also suggest that differences in force-level approaches to ROTI transcription could produce substantially different evidence for courtroom use. The findings are used to suggest improvements in ROTI production and training procedures that could subsequently improve the consistency of interview evidence in court.

References

Haworth, K. (2018). Tapes, transcripts and trials: The routine contamination of police interview evidence. The International Journal of Evidence & Proof, 22(4), 428-450.

Richardson, E., Haworth, K., & Deamer, F. (2022). For the Record: Questioning transcription processes in legal contexts. Applied Linguistics.

Details

Date:
22 June, 2022
Time:
11:00 am - 11:20 am
Event Category:

Venue

WDC403