The dynamics of Swedish police interrogations with suspects of alcohol-related, drug-related and serious crimes

Abstract

The aim of the current study was to explore the nature of Swedish police interrogations with suspects of alcohol-related offenses, drug offenses and other, more serious offenses. The taxonomy developed by Kelly, Miller, Redlich and Kleinman in 2013, was employed to analyze the relation between technique usage, suspect cooperation, and confession/denial outcomes over time in 64 written police records. The results indicate that the interrogations adhere to scientifically sanctioned methods in some regards but that there is room for improvement. The main discovery was the low degree of technique usage found in the alcohol and drug crime interrogations. This finding was mainly attributed to a lack of documentation, which is discussed in relation to Swedish documentation policy for different crime categories.