Multiple Types Of False Confessions

While most of the time people who are convicted of crimes actually committed them, there are sometimes cases in which people give false confessions. Not everyone who gives a false confession is convicted but it sometimes does happen. There are multiple types of false confessions which explain the reasoning behind why someone would do such a thing: (1) voluntary, (2) coerced-compliant, and (3) coerced internalized. I will be explaining these types of false confessions and the psychological principles can be applied to explain this phenomenon. The first type to discuss is the voluntary false confessions. These voluntary false confessions are defined as a self-incriminating statement made without external pressure from law enforcement. Voluntary
Unlike the voluntary false confessions, coerced-compliant confessions involve pressure from law enforcement officers. There is research suggesting that manipulation and deception from police officers could put people in stressful situations and may cause false confessions. Police induced false confessions can come from a process and sequence of influence, persuasion, and compliance, and usually involve psychological coercion. Some of the tactics used by police include asking misleading questions, minimizing the degree of harm, or suggesting they have incriminating evidence that they do not have. The latter is an example of a coercion error, which is when interrogators apply psychological tactics to manipulates the innocent suspect. In many cases, the innocent subject has and alibi that police officers can easily tear apart, leading the suspect to give a false confession. One reason subjects may give in and give a coerced-compliant confession is because they have already been previously convicted of other crimes and believe police are already suspicious of
One of them, a coercion error, was already mentioned that included interrogators using psychological tactics to manipulate the innocent suspect. Another error than can lead to a false confession is a misclassification error. This is when police mistakenly believe the suspect is guilty of a crime and therefore “misclassify” them as guilty as opposed to innocent. The last type of error mentioned is the contamination error. This can occur after an innocent suspect has “broken down” and admitted to the crime. However, once this has occurred, law enforcement is required to obtain a believable narrative from the suspect sharing how they carried out the crime in a detailed manor. This could be easy for an innocent person to accomplish because police could have been feeding them detailed information about the crime throughout their interrogation, or the suspect could have picked up information from the media regarding the