Deception In Police Deception

Police Deception
Police deception has and always will be a topic of discussion amongst the law enforcement community and the public we serve, protect, and prosecute. Police deception has been used as a tool to determine involvement as well a tool for apprehension. The use of undercover operations and entrapment situations to aid in the apprehension of criminals has become commonplace. So is deception by law enforcement reasonable in police interrogation and when is deception appropriate in this constraint? From a utilitarian view one can consider the positive outcomes that using deceptive tactics can produce, in some situations these positive outcomes are far greater than the negative. Taking a look at the use of deception tactics from a deontological
The suspect is interrogated, presented with false information, and admits guilt to actions he or she committed; or the suspect is interrogated, presented with false information, and admits guilt to actions he or she never committed. How and why does this occur, are the tactics that police use justified, and on a whole do they produce competent results? The confession to a crime is viewed by law enforcement and the judicial system as the proverbial nail in the coffin; admission is highly sought and revered. Brasswell et al., (2015) detailed eight deceptive interrogation techniques that law enforcement use to secure an admission, many of which can be viewed simply as police officers doing their job within the constraints the judicial system have given them. Alternately fabricated evidence, exaggerating the nature and severity of the offense, misrepresenting identity, and the use of promises stand out as the four that have an overt ethical dilemma. These tactics have elicited false confessions; coerced-compliant false confessions, and coerced-internalized false confessions (Kassin, 2008), both of which occur with pressure from the police and in this day and age, most of the police induced pressure being psychological in
So is it the police and their interrogation tactics that are to blame or is it the judicial system and the jury of one’s peers that has failed to look at evidence, confessions, and the beyond a reasonable doubt theory when evaluating suspects? Police officers are required to investigate and submit evidence of individuals guilt based on learning and circumstances that typically they have little knowledge of, the tactics in which police officers gather as much information as they can to pursue the suspect they believe committed the crime should be irrelevant as long as these tactics don’t violate individuals rights. The duty then lies within the courts to evaluate the information presented and determine whether or not the information is valid. Kassin (2008) describes solutions of a reformed system as improving the way jurors and judges evaluate confessions simply by being able to see how that confession was gathered in the first place. Requiring police agencies to record all interrogations and provide this recording to jurors and judges would not only force the police to operate within the rights of the individual; but it allows jurors and judges to see the process by which the confession occurred and determine the