International Survey on Interviewing Uncooperative Eyewitnesses

*** CALL FOR POLICE RESEARCH PARTICIPANTS ***

Some witnesses are uncooperative during the investigative interviews making it difficult for law enforcement agencies to gather complete and accurate information. Uncooperative witnesses are unwilling to be involved in the criminal investigation and refuse to provide valid information to aid the case. Nonetheless, there are ways in which interviewers try to overcome witness reluctance. We would like to learn about your interviewing experience with uncooperative witnesses, and what your perceptions are as an interviewer regarding lack of cooperation.

Could you please help us with our research? Your interviewing experience and expertise can help us understand better how you overcome the challenges of interviewing reluctant witnesses.

All police officers who conduct witness interviews in criminal investigations can take part in this research. You can take part in the survey by clicking on the following link:

https://maastrichtuniversity.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1zyIaVeaOOzKAh7

The study is a short online questionnaire, so it can be easily distributed to any of your colleagues willing to take the survey. Just forward the link above.

This is a project financed by The House of Legal Psychology, with researchers from Maastricht University (the Netherlands), Gothenburg University (Sweden), and University of Portsmouth (United Kingdom).  We received approval from the standing ethical committee of Maastricht University.

If you have any questions or would like more information about this research, you may contact the research team.

Thank you very much for your time and contribution!

Alejandra De La Fuente Vilar

a.delafuentevilar@maastrichtuniversity.nl

Dr. Robert Horselenberg

robert.horselenberg@maastrichtuniversity.nl​​

The deadline for the iIIRG’s Networking Grant is the 28th September.  If you are a member, apply now here: https://5gplvsty7.raisedbybears.co.uk/networking-grants-application/

Please see the below request from one of our academic members:

Dear members of iIIRG,

We are looking for a police force in the UK to collaborate with on our project regarding interviewing of children.

Simply put, our research targets situational conditions that police can apply to instantly improve evidence gathering from vulnerable interviewees. Such situational conditions have been adapted with impressive and immediate outcomes in judicial processes (Nuffield Family Justice Observatory, 2018; The Modernisation of Family Justice, 2016). This research collaboration will develop an intelligent and a practically easy operating policy for using such situational conditions in investigating child sexual abuse cases.

Via our research collaboration interviewers’ involved in interviewing children will develop and improve existing interviewing skills.

More details on the project:

Invitation for research collaboration in an international and national research project: How situational conditions influence police interviews with children victims or witnesses?

What is expecting from a police force: Provide access to police interviews of children victims or witnesses of alleged crime 6 to 11 years old.

Benefits from taking part: Free individual and group feedback/training to interviewers based on interviewers’ performance and the department’s performance compare with national and international standards. Receive an intelligent protocol for handling situational conditions to help improve interviewers’ performance.

Who would need to be involved?: Any department that conducts interviews with children victims or witnesses.

What is the time commitment?: 2 months to get relevant permissions to access the interviews and about 5 months to transcribe the interviews. We are flexible and willing to make changes to minimise your time on this.

What exactly we want?: Access to video recordings of police interviews with children who have been victims or witnesses of alleged crimes (6 to 11 years old). We may need to use your facilities to transcribe the video recordings. We are flexible and willing to make changes to minimise your time on this.

Would the Police be paid for its time?: No.

Deadline for expressing an interest: 31^st of October 2018

Our team has long experience on researching and training on police interviews with children.

Please email for further details M.Kyriakidou@shu.ac.uk

Thank you,

Dr. Marilena Kyriakidou

The iIIRG’s Networking Grant application process is now open! For more information and to apply click here.

The School of Psychology at Victoria University of Wellington is advertising for a Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Forensic Psychology. The job closes 8 August, and further information is available by following the link below. The School is particularly interested in applications from researchers who also have some relevant practice experience – i.e. relevant clinical or forensic psychology practice qualifications (although this is not essential).

https://www.victoria.ac.nz/about/careers/current-vacancies (Vacancy # 2248)

The theme of Triangle’s conference will be ‘Opening Doors’, focusing on positive responses when children or young people may be telling or showing you that they are at risk.

The speakers lead the field in research and practice, combining knowledge from social work, policing, law and psychology. Guest speakers include Ann Coffey MP, who will focus on listening to children and young people at risk of sexual exploitation and Professor Jan Horwarth who will focus on the essential need for practitioners to understand the daily lived experience of the child.

The other speakers work together in Triangle’s forensic interviewing, intermediary and training teams. Reg Hooke and Ann Stuart MBE share a background in child protection policing and safeguarding training. Dr Kim Collins lectures in psychology at Teesside Universitiy. Ruth Marchant and Charlie Orrell have backgrounds in psychology and speech and language therapy, specialising in children’s evidence.

The conference will run in London on 13th March 2018, click here to book places.

More information here: 13 03 2018 Opening Doors 3

Please click here for a fascinating video on changing police mindsets provided by the Anti-Torture Initiative, produced in collaboration with the Association for the Prevention of Torture in Geneva.

The animation depicts the effectiveness of non-coercive investigative interviewing methods and implementation of legal safeguards during the first hours of police custody. Additionally, it furthers the recommendations made by the former Special Rapporteur on Torture in his last report to the UN General Assembly (A/71/298) that called for the development of a set of universal standards and procedural safeguards to protect the physical and mental integrity of all persons during questioning. The animation is also available in English with subtitles in Spanish and French and can be found here.

Dear Colleague,

We write from the International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP), Division 10, Psychology and Law.

We invite you to complete a brief survey that aims to gather information about researchers and practitioners in the area of Psychology and Law. This invitations to complete the survey is sent to several hundred people around the globe, as also to several Psychology and Law associations.

We estimate that the survey will take you no longer than 15 minutes. Follow this link to the Survey: Take the Survey

What we hope to achieve in this survey is multifold:

1) We would like to get a sense of the kind of topics that Psychology and Law researchers, academics and professionals teach, research, offer opinions about, and think are important in their particular context.

2) We would like to create a voluntary international database of researchers and practitioners in Psychology and Law who are interested in collaborating with other researchers and practitioners. This database will contain contact information, and brief information about people in the database. All respondents to this survey who indicate their willingness to collaborate will appear in the database, and will receive access to it, once it is completed. We will summarise the information we gather in a brief report, and this will be made available to all respondents, and to IAAP Division 10 members

We do hope you will complete the survey, and look forward to communicating the results to you in due course. We want to make a special appeal to you, though – when you receive the link to the survey, we would appreciate you sending the link on to Psychology and Law people from countries we are less likely to have good information on regarding potential respondents (e.g. non-English speaking countries that are not in North America, Western Europe, or Australasia).

Fanny Verkampt, and Colin Tredoux; IAAP Division 10: Psychology and Law