Lies, Lies, Lies and How to Detect Them

Street psychology for police

Dr Jason Roach

Director, Crime and Policing Group

University of Huddersfield

Major emphasis on the offender (particularly interviewing)

Police decision making? (Ask and Alison ,2010)

• Traditional decision making research (cog psychology experimental research into human cog bias and info processing)

• Naturalistic decision making (how experienced individuals in their professional fields make decisions – optimal ones from a number of possible options).

Cognitive bias and erroneous decision making

Routine policing and ‘time poor’ situations?

1. Detecting false address givers

A psychology of false address giving (Roach, 2010)

• H1- a significant % of people will find it difficult to fabricate an entire false address when put on the spot (police scenario)

• H2- a significant % will, to differing degrees, give false-details that provide clues to the real address being concealed (top-down processing).

A quasi-experiment maybe (but not an RCT in sight!)

• Student sample (n=142), 75% female, mean age 22 yrs (range 18-55 yrs, std dev 6.3 years).

• Scenario given where encouraged to give a false address to police.

• Next, asked to try and make sense of the false address (e.g. random, similar to someone they know etc.)

• Last, asked to record their real address.

9

A psychology of address generation?

random old address known other

mixed same postcode

sim postcode

same address different number

previous postcode

Thought process identified

0

10

20

30

40

Percent

Graph 1. The thought processes identified in false detail generation by whole sample

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The Davinci postcode?

• 96% of respondents gave what they thought was a bona fide false postcode

• However, 55% gave the same PC as their real on, or a false postcode from the same postal area.

• Almost 70% of false postcodes did not to exist (but only 10% of the real ones given).

• Upshot: a large majority of FPs looked bona fide but were not.

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False existing postcodes (FEP)

Cross tabular analysis of those generating FEP’s

Showed that • 96% had identified the thought process involved, and • relied more heavily on TDP ( e.g. 15% old address; 31%

known other, 22% same/similar postcode).• Women relied more than males on TDP.

Implications for police street psychology

1. Those who attempt to lie about their addresses (especially zip codes) are likely to be hiding something (else why lie?).

2. Those good at coming up with bona fide false addresses are relying on prior knowledge (TDP) much of which has elements of truth.

3. Lying about your address is bloody difficult: cognitive overload.

2. Detecting false date of birth givers (Roach, Pease and Clegg, 2011)

• Scenario given where participants encouraged to give a false date of birth to the police

• Next, asked to give a false zodiac sign

• Also asked to record actual date of birth and zodiac sign

• Last, asked to explain why false date of birth and zodiac sign was selected

The zodiac study (it was written in the stars!)

• Sample=129 students, 77% female• 65% said they could identify where false DOB had

come from – only 35% said random• 47% gave a zodiac sign which did not match their false

DOB (age and gender t-tests not stat significant).• Those who got it correct said they knew it was the

correct sign for the false DOB given 9i.e. was brother’s DoB and sign).

• Upshot: They didn’t guess (TDP).

Implications for police street psychology

1. Those who attempt to lie about their DoB are likely to be hiding something, else why lie?

2. Most people are rubbish at guessing a correct corresponding zodiac sign.

3. Those who can are relying on (TDP) much of which has elements of truth.

A high-tec solution!

What’s in a name?

• False name generation study (2015) likely to rely on short-term memory.

• Known alias research (Pease and Leary, 2008).

• Still need data on some seasoned lags.

Liars lie because they are serious offenders?

Richard ‘Dick’ Turpin

• Arrested for stealing a horse. Later realised his identity as highwayman and murderer.

• http://www.york-united-kingdom.co.uk/dickturpin/

Madrid train bombs 2004

Self-Selection Policing (Roach and Pease, 2016)

• Those who do big bad things also do little bad things

• They ‘self-select’ (offender self-selection) for police attention.

• Minor offences are often much more easily detectable than the more isolated, infrequent and well concealed ones

• The difficulty is in separating ‘trigger offences’ from all minor offences (later)

Chenery, Henshaw and Pease (1999)

HO/RT1 (Roach 2007)

• 129 issued (PNC June 2006) 39% no-shows

• PNC – shows (20%) no-shows (58%)

• Strong correlation between non-compliance and PNC marker

• Strong correlation between non-compliance and serious criminality

• Regression analysis - frequency and length of career as main predictor variables.

Current SSP research (in need of an RCT?).

• Blue-badge offenders• Driving without

seatbelt• Driving in bus lanes• Driving while

disqualified.• Terrorists?

A change in police psychology?

• People tend to over-estimate offence homogeneity

• i.e. they over-estimate offence specialization

• Police also over-estimate offence homogeneity (Roach and Pease, 2013).

• Flanagan (2008).

And lastly….

Thank you very much for your attention

I’m happy to answer any questions (as long as they are easy ones).

j.roach@hud.ac.uk

References

• Roach, J. (2007a). HO/RT1culture: Cultivating police use of home office road traffic 1 form to identify active serious offenders. International Journal of Police Science and Management, 9(4), 357–370.

• Roach, J. (2007b). Those who do big bad things also usually do little bad things: Identifying active serious offenders using offender self-selection. International Journal of Police Science and Management, 9(1), 66–79.

• Roach, J. (2010) Home I where the heart lies? A study of false address giving to police. Legal and Criminological Psychology. Vol. 15 (209-220).

• Roach, J., Pease, K., and Clegg, K. (2011). Stars in their lies: How better to identify people who give false dates of birth to police. Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice Vol 5 (4)

http://policing.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/01/04/police.paq059?keytype=ref&ijkey=AzJPyEcctqAxxfn

)

• Roach, J. (2012). Terrorists, affordance and the over-estimation of offence homogeneity. In M. Taylor and P.M. Currie (Eds.) Terrorism and Affordance. London: Continuum.

• Roach, J. and Pease (2013). Policee overestimation of offence homogeneity. Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling