Police Questioning: Are they Interrogating or Performing Inception?

I'm sure most of us have seen the television show "Law & Order," a dramatic crime series that bases its episodes on the twisting patterns of events that make up the crime in New York. In nearly every episode, the main characters sit down with a suspect in the interrogation room and drill them for answers: "Where were you that night? What happened to the girl? Did you kill her?" In most cases, the suspect is frightened, as he should be since his future is now hanging in the balance of the NYPD detectives. When the suspect begins to spill information, we usually take what they say at face value. However, what happens when they admit to committing a murder for which they are not responsible. At that point in time it may seem like the best idea to confess, since that's what they detectives are hoping for - a confession.

In an article by David K Shipler in the New York Times newspaper, Shipler expresses his concerns about these false confessions and how numerous they may in fact be.The Innosense Project has determined that 24% of the 289 convictions that were overturned by DNA analysis, were in fact proved to be false confessions. So we ask ourselves, why do these suspects admit to these crimes of such severity? Shipler things that a lot of it has to do with age or mental maturity. People with mental disorders or social anxiety, as well as younger children were more apt to falsely confess under immense pressure. Some mature adults have also falsely confessed but their numbers are slightly less. Shipler also believes that the way in which officers are permitted to interrogate their suspects is also a reason for the disturbing number of false confessions. Officers are permitted to use tricks such as "mentioning" miranda rights in normal speech, rather than directly reading them to their suspects, making their rights appear less evident. Officers are also allowed to lie to their suspects by doing things such as presenting false fingerprints as evidence to the suspect to convince them that they have been caught. Such actions can cause a suspect, whom is already under immense stress, to crack under the pressure. In efforts to avoid being tortured or harmed, Shipler believes that many false confessions were made out of fear. 

In order to reduce the numbers of false confessions, Shipler suggests that we do away with these loop holes that officers are attempting to make to convince suspects of their guilt. He suggests that by clearly explaining rights, by asking straight forward questions, and by providing a simple environment, people will not be apt to admit to something that have not done. Coming from a man who has studied numerous governments, mostly those under Arab and Jewish rule, I feel like he has a pretty good grasp on the various methods of interrogation, and which ones do and do not work effectively.

I support what Shipler suggests, however I feel that he is awfully hard on the officers who interrogate suspects. We must also not that he is talking about one class of unworthy officers, not all officers as a whole. Thus, he is making a broad and general statement about how officers cheat the interrogation system. When we narrow it down to the few unworthy men who perform these actions, I believe that Shipler is spot on with his opinion and suggestion. These actions must be put to and end immediately, as these are the lives of our citizens, not actors on a TBS television show like "Law & Order." We must uphold our law that states that everyone is innocent until proven guilty, and by scaring our suspects into falsely admitting to a crime, we are violating that law, because we are treating them as if they were guilty already.