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This chapter spotlights the key aspect of preparation and planning for an interview: the pre-contact assessment of potential or actual constraints. It discusses the breadth of assessment, decision-making and actions that are integral to preparing and planning to interview a witness — whether vulnerable, intimidated and significant (VIS) witnesses or non-VIS — or a suspect. It argues that such assessment is essential to the task of orientation — preparation for the interview in terms of assignment of the lead interviewer role, tasking the second investigator and key third parties — and key decision-making concerning the practicalities of the interview: location, medium, manner of recording, timing and duration. The chapter then elaborates the definition of constraint, which the chapter described as an aspect of an individual's circumstances — psychological make-up, physical make-up, ability to function cognitively and socially and to communicate, and personal situation — that actually or potentially disadvantages the individual in conversation prior to and during the interview. Ultimately, it illustrates the staging process of pre-contact assessment, which differs for witnesses and suspects.

This chapter establishes the scene for the rest of this book. It begins with a brief definition of the conversation management (CM) approach to investigative interviewing, before explaining the psychology of investigation as a decision-making process. Having distinguished the two opposing ethical perspectives on investigation, the chapter then introduces the context for the creation and emergence of CM with a detailed description of the practice of expedient interrogation of suspects and expedient interviewing of witnesses up to 1993: the year that PEACE — the national investigative interviewing model framed upon CM — was introduced. It also investigates the evolution of PEACE, the subsequent emergence of the Achieving Best Evidence (ABE) approach to interviewing vulnerable and intimidated witnesses, and the Professionalising of Investigation Programme (PIP). Ultimately, the chapter concludes with a synopsis of research findings that underpin the effectiveness of CM and how we continue to develop our approach to CM.

This chapter focuses on the suspects who exercise their right to remain silent, that is, to say 'no comment' in response to questions concerning the offence, but without presenting a prepared statement. It notes that this approach can cause interviewers to lose focus and control of the situation. The chapter details the effective, ethical, and professional conversation management of this scenario, by first examining the logic behind the decision, how it will be presented and then how to proceed, to ensure that a legally compliant interview product is obtained that can still advance the case. It also offers a detailed discussion about responding to the suspect who unexpectedly switching to answering questions and the suspect who is not legally represented and exercises the right to silence.

This chapter explores the key issues relevant to the interview of any suspect. It begins with legal advice, explaining the role and objectives of the legal adviser to allow one to understand their behaviour and work with them as fellow professionals working at the “front end” of the criminal justice system. The chapter also considers the key tasks of interview planning, in particular information disclosure both prior to and during an interview, and practical preparation prior to meeting the suspect. It then investigates the legal safeguard of the caution and other pre-questioning issues. Ultimately, the chapter examines the presentation of case material to the suspect, bad character questioning, and how to tackle omission and anomaly by conducting a FAIR review, before closing — appropriately — with how to end the interview.

The author's final peer reviewed version can be found by following the URI. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link. Self-evaluation of one’s own performance has been found in prior research to be an enabler of professional development. The task of evaluation is also a core component of a model of the investigative interviewing of victims, witnesses and suspects, being increasingly used throughout the world. However, it remains the case that there has been little research as to how practitioners approach the task itself. The present study examined the topic through the lens of observing how effectively 30 real-life investigators in the UK undertook evaluation of their interviews, representing almost the entire investigative frontline workforce of a small law enforcement agency in this country. Using an established scale of measurement, both investigators’ and an expert’s ratings of the same sample of interviews were compared across a range of tasks and behaviours. It was found that in almost all the assessed behaviours, requiring of the investigators to provide a self-rating, their scores tended to significantly outstrip those applied to the sample by the expert. Reasons are explored for the investigators’ overstated assessments. Implications for practice are then discussed.

This chapter will examine how the cognitive interview (CI) has been applied into the real world of policing. We will consider the impact the CI has had on every-day policing, ranging from front-line communication, to being utilised within a visually recorded interview, which may replace live evidence in the court-room (depending on the legislative framework of the country it is being applied). As the CI is utilised in a multitude of different types of information and evidence gathering scenarios the way in which the CI needs to be applied, and thus trained should reflect the context within which it is to be used in the field. Accordingly, the UK has developed the ‘Tiered approach’ to interview training (Clarke & Milne, 2011), whereby interviewers learn interviewing skills (including the CI) incrementally, across a police investigator’s career span. This approach has been adopted in numerous countries and the chapter will explain the approach, outline a model of training to maximize transference of skills into the workplace, and the research base examining its effectiveness in the field.

All investigative interviews are dialogues set within a legal context specific to an individual country or jurisdiction. Nevertheless, the need to ask questions appropriately is common to every interview, if reliable information is to be obtained. Despite this fact, published research has frequently reported a lack of skill in both the types of questions used by interviewers and the manner in which they are asked. However, during a recent quantitative evaluation of an advanced interview training programme in the UK, it was observed that graduates of this programme, in contrast to previous research, appeared to employ highly structured questioning strategies, methodically covering relevant subject matter across the complete time-span of an interview. The current study is a follow-up study using an alternative qualitative methodology for a deeper exploration of the rationale behind the formation of these questioning strategies. Using ‘think-aloud’ techniques, two independent groups of police officers ( n = 9) with advanced training in interviewing of either suspects or witnesses were individually interviewed about how they had structured their questioning during two phases of a simulated interview conducted on a training course. The results confirm, first, the high level of conscious decision-making employed by the advanced interviewers in formulating their question strategies, but secondly, identify excessive levels of control evident in some interviews with compliant witnesses. Finally, the results confirm the complex nature of real-life investigative interviewing, even for highly trained interviewers. The results are discussed.

In this chapter, we discuss the interviewing of adult witnesses and victims with reference to how the extant psychological and linguistic literature has contributed to understanding and informing interview practice over the past 20 years and how it continues to support practical and procedural improvements. We have only scratched the surface of this important and complex topic, but throughout this chapter we have directed readers to many in-depth reviews and some of the most contemporary research literature currently available in this domain. We have introduced the PEACE model and described the Cognitive Interview procedure and its development. We have also discussed rapport building, question types and communication style, all with reference to witness memory and practical interviewing. Finally, we highlight areas that would benefit from research, for example conducting interviews with interpreters, and how new training initiatives are seeking to improve interview procedures and interviewer practice.