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The last 30 years have seen a dramatic shift in investigative interview training in the United Kingdom (UK) as a result of miscarriages of justice cases featuring vulnerable suspects. In 2001, the UK Police adopted a five-tiered approach to investigative interviewing, with Tier 1 for new recruits through to Tier 5 for interview managers (IMs). The IM is responsible for overseeing strategic decisions with regard to the investigative interviewing process. Even though the role of an IM has been in existence for over twenty years, it is one of the most under-researched aspects of investigative interviewing. The aim of the current paper is to present an oversight of the role of an IM in UK policing using a self-report questionnaire, presenting the responses of 53 UK police IMs’ perceptions of their role in high-stakes crime investigations. Content analysis was carried out on the responses and revealed that IMs are most frequently deployed to murder investigations, followed by serious assaults, then sexual offences. However, not all of the respondents had received the pre-requisite training for the role. Nevertheless, the IMs broadly agreed that the senior investigating officer respected the advice provided by the IM, though without fully understanding what the role entailed. IMs unanimously said the role was crucial to high-stakes investigations and presented their perceptions of the skills, qualities and knowledge that IMs require to perform the role. Finally, future directions of research in this area are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The death of Adam Regis in March 2007 and subsequent murder investigation highlighted the difficulties of encouraging young people to cooperate with the police by providing information that could lead to a successful conviction. ‘Snitching’, as it is known, is currently an under-explored area of research in the UK with most extant research having been conducted in the US. Therefore this paper attempts partially to fill this gap in the research. Drawing on a recent multi-method qualitative study, involving 24 interviews with young people in one London borough and two focus groups with teachers, police officers and youth workers, this paper seeks to explore the puzzling issue of why young people do not ‘snitch’. In particular, we explore the impact of relationships with the police and the impact of wider social influences – such as young people's concerns about their safety, peer groups, particularly ‘elders’, families and music – on their decision to ‘actively cooperate’ with the police. We argue that peers, specifically ‘olders’, appear to have more influence on a young person's decision to cooperate with the police, than their relationships with the police or the advice from their family. However, the intertwined nature of the influences on young people's decision to cooperate and the importance of trust in the police provide two points of variation with the existing research on procedural justice and police legitimacy. We also demonstrate the benefits of conducting research on policing ‘from within’ and of collaborations between practitioners and academics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes murder detectives' perceptions of the Lawrence Inquiry and its impact on homicide investigation in London. Based on extensive qualitative research with a murder team, and interviews with detectives involved in the original inquiry, the article describes how the events surrounding Stephen Lawrence's murder and its investigation were 'framed' in very different ways. In one account race and institutional racism were central, in the other they were peripheral. Although denial of racism was a key feature of detectives' discourse, their knowledge of murder investigations also led them to challenge criticisms made of the investigation - some of which were supported by the research. However, it was also apparent that detectives were generally unaware of the potential for unwitting or discriminatory behaviour in their investigations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]