Innocent Adults Are Easy To Convince They Committed a Serious Crime

binarstu (720435) writes "Research recently published [link is to abstract only; full text requires subscription] in Psychological Science quantifies how easy it is to convince innocent, "normal" adults that they committed a crime. The Association for Psychological Science (APS) has posted a nice summary of the research. From the APS summary: "Evidence from some wrongful-conviction cases suggests that suspects can be questioned in ways that lead them to falsely believe in and confess to committing crimes they didn't actually commit. New research provides lab-based evidence for this phenomenon, showing that innocent adult participants can be convinced, over the course of a few hours, that they had perpetrated crimes as serious as assault with a weapon in their teenage years."

Comments

The average human being

[Anonymous Coward]

Is a gullible idiot.

Reid Technique

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. It's called the Reid technique and the police in the US have been deliberately exploiting it for years to obtain false convictions.

They know they are exploiting a psychological weakness. They do not care that innocent people are sent to prison. They simply want convictions.

The (in)justice system

[fyngyrz]

And along with that, "plea bargains" should be absolutely forbidden. What they do is provide the prosecution tools to coerce and frighten victims of the system into admitting guilt for things they didn't do, at the same time as they take the determination of the individual's guilt out of the hands of a jury.

Re:The (in)justice system

[SlaveToTheGrind]

"plea bargains" should be absolutely forbidden.

You're assuming infinite resources. As it is, would you prefer a system where (1) your taxes now have to cover a 20-30-fold increase in state and federal courts (and prosecutors) needed to take all cases to trial; (2) on the other side of the bar, an even higher percentage of the population becomes criminal defense lawyers; and (3) you yourself end up on jury duty multiple times a year?

Or, would you rather a world where the prosecutors just pursue the most egregious criminals given the limited resources they have, and put everyone else right back out on the streets with no deterrent whatsoever?

I'm not suggesting the current plea-bargain system is optimal or that incremental changes aren't possible. What I am suggesting that you can't just throw out such a fundamental piece without stepping back and redesigning the entire system.

Re:The (in)justice system

[mrchaotica]

The alternative is the prosecutors office being required to pursue every single case. 5-17 year old took a nude picture of herself? Child Porn charges. kill in clear self defense? Murder charges. transpose two digits on your tax return? Tax Fraud charges. There wouldn't be enough people to serve on the juries for the people that missed jury duty! There wouldn't be enough people to serve on the juries for the people that missed jury duty!

GOOD! Then we might finally get some of these arbitrary, capricious, unconstitutional, bullshit laws off the books!