Gaining Confessions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Gaining Confessions - Essay Example Gaining confessions from suspects are both challenging and rewarding in terms of the investigators’ ability to extract the accurate information to make a just conviction. O’Connor & Maher (2009) indicated that there are â€Å"four major areas of concern to address to reduce future wrongful convictions incidents: false confessions, inadequate investigations, mistaken eyewitness identification, and delayed, absent, mistaken, or improper forensic analysis† (par. 5). In this regard, the essay aims to proffer issues pertaining to gaining confessions in the criminal justice system. The discourse would identify the different types of confessions; delve into the relevant aspects of interrogation, and present some recommendations to prevent or minimize the possibilities of generating false confessions. Wicremasinghe (2002) define a confession as â€Å"an admission the words of which expressly or substantially admit guilt or when they are taken together in the context inferentially admit guilt† (Wicremasinghe, 2002, par. 15). In the article written by O’Connor & Maher (2009), the authors cited Kissin (2008) as identifying three types of confessions, to wit: â€Å"(1) voluntary confessions – those in which people claim responsibility for crimes they did not commit without prompting from police; (2) compliant confessions – cases in which the suspect acquiesces in order to escape from a stressful situation, avoid punishment, or gain a promised or implied reward; and (3) internalized false confessions – those in which innocent but vulnerable suspects, exposed to highly suggestive interrogation techniques, come to not only confess but come to believe they committed the crime in question† (Kissin, 249 as cited by O’Connor & Maher, par. 22). Due to the controversial nature of confessions, per se, the authenticity of the information gathered during the confession