Cognitive/Ethical Interview & Case Formulation

Question 1

What is a cognitive interview?

Answer 1

An interview questioning used by the police and forensics psychologists to interview suspects, victims and witnesses.

Question 2

What is the aim of a cognitive interview

Answer 2

The aim is to improve the testimonies given by victims and witnesses so that they are reliable and not affected by how an interview is conducted.

Question 3

What are the four key principles of cognitive interviewing?

Answer 3

1) Mentally recreating the environment and context
2) Reporting every detail, in depth.
3) Recounting the event in different orders
4) Report the event from different perspectives

Question 4

State 3 strengths of a cognitive interview

Answer 4

👍🏻There is supporting evidence to suggest that the use of CI will approve accuracy. Milne (1997) found that the use of the full CI (all principles) achieved more recall than other single interview techniques.
👍🏻The use of CI has many practical applications to society spreading to cont cos beyond that of the police. Including to look at long term recall of physical activities, investigating the impact of ageing and looking at sexual attitudes and lifestyles.
👍🏻The use of CI allows for individual differences to be accounted for. Although there is a specific protocol to follow when carrying out a CI, there is also room for tailoring the process to suit the individual in order to ensure the most accurate recall.

Question 5

State 3 weaknesses of a cognitive interview

Answer 5

👎🏻There is opposing evidence from Johnson et al (1979) who found that people who repeatedly imagined a picture they seen did have false recall of the picture. This implies using imagery when reinstating the context might be a problem regarding accurate recall.
👎🏻There are practical problems with the use of cognitive interviewing as it requires specialist training in order to use CI effectively. This training and expertise can be costly to police divisions whether this is in terms of training their staff or using specialist staff to undertake the interviews.
👎🏻The use of CI raise some ethical questions. Is it ethical to ask a witness to recreate a distressing or traumatic event? Precautions must be made to ensure these witnesses have access to proper emotional support when being asked to go the through the CI process.

Question 6

Define an ethical interview

Answer 6

Interviews should treat suspects with respect, as equals and with the same rights to dignity, self determination and choice.
In conducting interviews with suspects, there has to be a ‘due process’ which means the criminal justice system has the power in a situation to control where someone is interviewed yet the individual still has rights which must be adhered to.

Question 7

What evidence suggests that police interviews are required to be ethical?

Answer 7

Baldwin (1992) looked at over 400 videos and 200 audio recordings of police interviews and concluded that standards were low and there were problems in a number of areas of the interview process. E.g. Not developing a good rapport and trying to get the suspect to accept their version of events.
Baldwin suggest d that standard police interviewing took a strong aggressive, macho and provocative approach leading to suspects refusing to take part and interviewers being too judgemental.

Question 8

What is the UK process of ethical interviewing?

Answer 8

PEACE is a structure that is meant to build trust and ensure the person feels their needs are being listened to and taken into account in the interview planning.

Question 9

What are the steps of the ethical interview process?

Answer 9

Planning and preparation
Engage and explain
Account 
Closure
Evaluate

Question 10

Explain what is meant by the ‘P’ in PEACE

Answer 10

Planning and preparation
The interview should plan the process before the interview takes places, noting wins and objectives, topics of interest and the place and time of the interview.

Question 11

Explain what is meant by the ‘E’ in PEACE

Answer 11

Engage and explain
Rapport needs to be built with the suspect/victim/witness. This achieved by explaining how the interview will take place and to answer questions to clarify concerns.

Question 12

Explain what is meant by the ‘A’ in PEACE

Answer 12

Account
This is the invitation to the suspect/victim/witness to provide an account of their behaviour or what they saw.
The way an account will be awks for and how it would be elicited from a witness is decided upon at the planning stage.

Question 13

Explain what is meant by the ‘C’ in PEACE

Answer 13

Closure

Bringing the interview to a good conclusion and maintain rapport. The aim is to avoid anger or anxiety as it ends.

Question 14

Explain what is meant by the ‘E’ in PEACE

Answer 14

Evaluate

Interviews should be evaluated against required aims to look at the material obtained.

Question 15

State one and one weakness of the use of ethical interviews

Answer 15

👍🏼The use of ethical interviewing has many practical applications to society as it’s use is linked to the improvement in the reliability of EWT as well as improving society’s view of the police.
👎🏼There are practical problems with the use of ethical interviewing as it requires specialist training in order to use PEACE effectively. This is in terms of training their staff or using specialist staff to undertake the interviews.

Question 16

Describe case formulation

Answer 16

Case formulation occurs after a conviction, it is about understanding the offender, analysing the offence and considering what function the offence might have for the individual.
It is a way of making sense of a persons offence, by looking at their relationships, biological and social circumstances, life events and how they have interpreted thew events that have happened to them.

Question 17

Who put forward recommendations for all case formulations and what are they?

Answer 17

Hart et al (2011)
They should be:
Individualised - driven by the individuals history and data.
Narrative - natural language is used with a qualitative approach, ensuing all complexities of the offender are taken into account.
Diachronic - meaning they span from the past, through to the present and look to the future.

Question 18

When is case formulation useful?

Answer 18

Drake and Ward (2003) suggest 3 contexts where it is useful:
When an offender presents complex problems and treat is unclear e.g. Substance abuse but shows other problematic behaviour.
When little is known about the problem or the offence.
When standard treatments have not changed behaviour in a significant way.

Question 19

What is offence analysis?

Answer 19

Offence analysis refers to the analysis of a crime including assessment of the offender completed by a forensic psychologist.
It is a key component of a case formulation.
Forensic psychologists have to find similar offences committed by other offenders and look for similar behaviours/issues, called contingencies, to then draw conclusions.

Question 20

State two strengths of the use of case formulations

Answer 20

👍🏼It has practical applications to society outside of the criminal justice system. It is also completed by clinical and counselling psychologists in a clinical setting and relating to mental health issues of patients. Case formulations gathers together information that can be used to make a diagnosis and suggest treatment.
👍🏼The use of case formulation produces more valid explanations of offending behaviour because the formulations go beyond facts and a description of an offence to suggest explanations for the offending behaviour and even treatment and rehabilitation programmes. It is focussed on understanding the offenders problems and putting forward in to a treatment plan.

Question 21

State two weaknesses of the use of case formulations

Answer 21

👎🏼There are practical problems as it takes place at one moment in time with the information available at that point. Other events might happen which will change the formulation or if it is created when an offender is in prison, being in a different environment may affect the risk of reoffending when they leave prison.
👎🏼They can be criticised for being to subjective as interpretation is a key component in formulation. The person doing the forensic formulation takes a lot of information from an assessment and then puts together a simple and concise summary that informs a treatment plan for the offender. Interpretation means some information will be left out and some left in, that decision process means personal bias can alter the formulation.

Question 22

State one strength and one weakness of the use of offence analysis

Answer 22

👍🏼It produces in depth and detailed data from the assessment. OA plays a key key role in producing a case formulation for an offender, this requires a detailed qualitative approach about the offence and function the offence plays for the offender, with offence analysis, case formulation would not be as specific.
👎🏼We can question the validity of the data. This is because self-report methods are often used which gathers retrospective data. This means that offenders may not recall events or issues from the past as accurately as those that have recently occurred.