Where bias begins: a snapshot of police officers’ beliefs about factors that influence the investigative interview with suspects

The aim of the current study was to obtain a snapshot of police officer’s beliefs about factors that may influence the outcome of the investigative interview with suspects. We created a 26-item survey that contained statements around three specific themes: best interview practices, confessions and interviewee vulnerabilities. Police officers (N = 101) reported their beliefs on each topic by indicating the level of agreement or disagreement with each statement. The findings indicated that this sample of officers held beliefs that were mostly consistent with the literature. However, many officers also responded in the mid-range (neither agree nor disagree) which may indicate they are open to developing literature-consistent beliefs of the topics. Understanding what officers believe about factors within the investigative interview may have implications for future training. It may also help explain why some officers do not consistently apply best practices (i.e. strong counterfactual beliefs) versus officers who reliably apply literature-consistent practices to their interviews (i.e. knowledge-consistent beliefs).This research is supported by a fellowship awarded from the Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate Program, The House of Legal Psychology (EMJD-LP) with Framework Partnership Agreement (FPA) 2013-0036 and Specific Grant Agreement (SGA) 2015-1610 awarded to Nicole Adams.Published onlin

Development and Transformation of the Communicative Element of Socio-cultural Activities

The relevance of the subject matter derives from the fact that communication is one of the oldest institutions of humanity and plays a crucial role in modern society. The authors used general scientific methods such as generalisation, analysis and integration of elements of the concept of conventional communication as well. The purpose of the study is to define the essence of the models of socio-cultural transformation, as well as the characteristics and features of the development of socio-cultural activities. The study analyses how socio-cultural content functions in social communication; the key theoretical thesis of the functionality message is identified. The study discusses the models that influence socio-cultural transformation on the global level and make changes both in the global cultural space and in the cultural space of countries, communities, and people in particular. The study proposes means to strengthen the innovative potential of Ukrainian culture. The authors emphasise that the phenomenon of communication culture requires in-depth theoretical and methodological studies of the problems of its design and support.&nbsp

Optimising the length of random breath tests: Results from the Queensland Community Engagement Trial

Research suggests that the length and quality of police-citizen encounters affect policing outcomes. The Koper Curve, for example, shows that the optimal length for police presence in hot spots is between 14 and 15 minutes, with diminishing returns observed thereafter. Our study, using data from the Queensland Community Engagement Trial (QCET), examines the impact of encounter length on citizen perceptions of police performance. QCET involved a randomised field trial, where 60 random breath test (RBT) traffic stop operations were randomly allocated to an experimental condition involving a procedurally just encounter or a business-as-usual control condition. Our results show that the optimal length of time for procedurally just encounters during RBT traffic stops is just less than 2 minutes. We show, therefore, that it is important to encourage and facilitate positive police–citizen encounters during RBTat traffic stops, while ensuring that the length of these interactions does not pass a point of diminishing returns