The quality of forensic interviewing practices is of utmost importance if the right of both child victims and innocent suspects are to be protected.
— Professor Michael Lamb
A study of the outcomes of child sex abuse cases in the US state of Utah suggests that the introduction of improved techniques for interviewing young victims leads to fewer cases being dropped early in the investigative process and results in a greater percentage of prosecutions. The findings support the argument for better training of police interviewers who have the highly sensitive task of gathering information about traumatic incidents.
A paper summarising the study (‘Do Case Outcomes Change When Investigative Interviewing Practices Change?’) will appear next month (May 2013) in the journal Psychology, Public Policy, and Law. The research was carried out by an international team including Michael Lamb, Professor of Psychology at Cambridge University, who is an expert on children and forensic interviewing.
The study is the first to focus on the investigative interview as a predictor of outcomes – such as the filing of criminal charges, prosecution, and guilty pleas or convictions.
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Image: in the shadows
Credit: mago.uno
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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