Through my research, I first explored the experiences of pressure, stress and anxiety by interviewers in silent or no-comment suspect interviews. I then sought to establish whether there was any correlation between the pressure experienced and other identified influencers: age, gender, role, prior interviewing experience, length of service and self-efficacy (confidence in role, confidence as an interviewer). With the ability to switch off comments, this investment could instead be redirected to additional trusted news content for audiences.”

silent treatment during suspect interviews Dealing with the silent treatment during suspect interviews

The woman reported him, and the husband was arrested. “We charged him, had him remanded, but he kept appealing, and kept winning. He’d go to court and say things like, ‘Oh, but I’m going to miss my sister’s wedding,’ and the judge would let him go.” Yeschke CL. (1997). 'The art of investigative interviewing: A human approach to testimonial evidence'. Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann. About the author The most significant result was the relationship between self-efficacy and pressure experienced. The results revealed that self-efficacious interviewers would perceive the demands presented by a no-comment or silent interviewee as less threatening or demanding than those who doubt their interviewing skills and abilities. Bandura A, Adams NE and Beyer J. (1977). 'Cognitive processes mediating behavioral change'. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35(3), pp 125–139. If the interviewers leave the course feeling confident in their abilities, with a clear model in mind of what they seek to achieve, mastery will be far more achievable.

At one point in the book, she recounts living in shared police accommodation, and how one male officer filmed a female counterpart in the shower. He was reported, but not fired. The officer’s next job was to protect victims of sexual offences.

Belittled and bullied - my life as a woman in the Met police

People complain to the police all the time that they’re not doing enough [to secure a conviction], but what they have to understand is that our work was often frustrated by the next step in the criminal justice system. The Crown Prosecution Service isn’t really fit for purpose; they’re failing to keep people safe time and again. If the CPS doesn’t deal with it properly, then there’s only so much the police can do.” I do want to point out that there are some really good people in the force doing an incredible job in very tough circumstances,” she says, “but, yes, there are some really bad apples, too.” During my research, I found that multiple studies had already examined the impact of oppressive silence, albeit at the hands of police interviewers. However, these studies didn’t consider that silence is not just a tool at the disposal of the interviewer. Quite the contrary, it is more readily available to the interviewee, who has no obligation in law to utter a sound. the belief that the interviewer had received sufficient training to deal with a no-comment or silent interviewee Mastery of the task being measured is achieved most powerfully through a direct experience of mastery. An opportunity to conduct a no-comment or silent interview successfully will enhance self-belief, even if this success is experienced in a training scenario.

Attentional control theory suggests that anxiety disrupts the operation of working memory, reducing cognitive performance during complex tasks (Calvo and Carreiras, 1993). This was highly relevant to my study, as police interviews are complex tasks that require simultaneous cognitive processes, placing a high demand for cognitive resources on the interviewer.

No Comment by Jess McDonald | Waterstones

This presents Sussex Police and the wider interviewing community with an opportunity to refine interview training with the goal of increasing interviewer’s self-efficacy levels, which will benefit their interviewing skills. I wrote what I saw,” McDonald says, “and, yes, it reveals an uncomfortable truth, but then the police are our public servants at the end of the day, and so we should know what goes on, shouldn’t we?”

Since then, media companies have been advised to deploy significant resources into moderating comments or refrain from posting articles that were likely to attract potentially defamatory comments in response. I’ve always been fascinated by the fine-grain interactions, verbal and otherwise, that take place between suspects and investigators – and even solicitors – during suspect interviews. I was interested in why some investigators seemed to relish the opportunity to interview suspects and fought to lead on high-stakes serious crime interviews, while others – despite their length of service and experience – appeared to do whatever they could to avoid the interview room. The moment she qualified, the regularity of her previous working life evaporated. “It’s all shiftwork, so you no longer have a Monday to Friday, and you don’t have weekends off. Instead, you have rest days. But if you’re working a particular case, you just see it through to completion. The work-life balance,” she notes, “wasn’t great.”