Detective Diaries - Podcast 'Professor Raymond Bull Investigative Interviewing P.E.A.C.E.'

TRANSCRIPT

Professor Raymond Bull (Part 1)

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Welcome to Detective Diaries brought to you by Private Detectives Answers Investigation.

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If you are captivated by the art of deduction, the thrill of solving the unsolvable, or the

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enigmatic world of private investigation, you've just found your new favourite podcast.

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Detective Diaries is where secrets unravel and the truth is always a clue away, presented

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by Private Detectives' Answers Investigation. Each episode contains offbeat conversations

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about the real people involved in investigation.

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Welcome again to Detective Diaries. Today, from the relax setting of purchases in

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Chichester, we're taking you through the art and science of investigative interviewing.

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I feel that blends psychology, strategy and the search for truth.

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I'm honoured today to be joined by a true Titan in the world of forensic and criminal psychology,

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Professor Ray Bull. Professor Bull is widely regarded as a leading figure in investigative

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interviewing research. He's an emritus of Professor Forensic Psychology at the University of

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Leicester, here in England. For over four decades his work has fundamentally reshaped how justice

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is pursued, most notably through his pioneering involvement in the PEACE method. This revolutionary

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framework moved police interviewing away from coercive interrogation towards an empathy-driven,

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non-coercive approach that prioritises rapport and psychological sides over common sense hunches.

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His work is not only shaped academia but also police training programmes internationally,

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from Europe and Canada to Asia, Africa and Latin America, advising police forces in over 35

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countries and serving as an expert witness in more than 150 cases. His accolades are also quite vast.

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In 2022, he was recognised as a distinguished member of the American Psychological Law Society

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for his exceptional contributions to Psychology and Law. He served as the president of the European

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Association of Psychology and Law from 2014 to 2017 and as immediate past president from 2017 to 2020.

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Professor Bull is also an honorary fellow at the British Psychological Society, which is limited to

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no more than 40 living psychologists awarded for his contribution to Psychology. He's co-authored

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over 300 papers, whose work directly informing UK government guidelines, including the memorandum

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of good practice for interviewing child witnesses. The amount of the amount of the

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amount of the guests has achieved continues over decades and while I would love to sit here

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and read through all of them, I don't think we'd have much of an episode left by the time I've done

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that. Professor Ray Bull, thank you so much for joining me here today.

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Oh, thank you. It's a pleasure to have the opportunity to talk with you and for people to listen

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to what we have to say. Brilliant. Thank you so much indeed. So I suppose the first question I have is,

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is every day still a school day? You've co-authored over 300 papers, are you still learning at the point?

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Yes, yes, I mean, we had a slightly earlier conversation today where you made a very good point that I

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would like to follow up on, which is when people are being interviewed in investigation, for example,

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by the police or by another professional organisation. Are they more constrained when being video and

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audio recording compared to being audio recorded only? Indeed. I'm not aware of anything on that

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in the investigative arena. There may be literature in other arenas like medical professionals

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interviewing patients or in social work or the helping professions, but I haven't come across anything

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in the literature which I tried to read quite a lot within the investigative interview. And

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I think it was last year or the year before I was lucky enough to be invited to give a lecture in

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person at a university in Malaysia. And at question time, one of their PhD students said, and I'm now

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quoting him, "Professor, I very much like the idea that we get information not from students pretending

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to be victims, witnesses or suspects, but we actually analyse things in real life". So he said the work

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you've cited on what people that were now in prison have got to say, or analysing recorded interviews

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with suspects. He said, however, what about the people who have never been detected, who have never

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been interviewed and therefore are not in prison? What about them? And I thought, oh, gosh,

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what an interesting question. Indeed. And so much so that when Professor Bechamel invited me

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in the journal that she edits, she was editing a version celebrating the journal's 25 years.

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And so she invited me to write about my 25 years. I've finished that article with that student's

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question. Amazing, amazing. So always learning. Always learning and always developing. It's quite

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interesting, as you just said, you know, there are particular niche fields, perhaps within the

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investigative interviewing. Yes. I still yet to be explored. So every day is a school day. Yes.

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Did you find that still quite joyous when you perhaps come across something new or something that hasn't

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been explored and you think, that's what I want to go into? Yeah, absolutely because it confirms

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that there's still more to learn as Albert Einstein said and I'm quoting Einstein if I may. Of

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course, please. So he said, "the more I learn, the more I realize I don't know". Right. And I've got that

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I'm saying on the wall in my office. I've really, so it's sort of a daily motto and reminder to

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you. Yeah. Excellent. Excellent. So obviously investigative interviewing, as I said,

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in introduction, you are a man who has decades of experience about this, but what area perhaps

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do you most enjoy researching when looking at this field? As you kindly said in your introduction,

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many years ago, my focus with colleagues, including then Becky Meln doing her PhD,

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was how best to interview children who may have had a negative experience in order to get

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information from them. And a lot of people around the world did really good work on that. So we know

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what to do. The ability to do it is the issue. Right. So we have guidance around the world more

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recently from the European Association of Psychology and Law that you mentioned. And all that

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guidance has the same skeleton, the same guidance irrespective of where it's been published.

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So we, as I say, we know what to do. But as I was coming to realize that we know what to do

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for interviewing children, I thought, hmm, what's the field that's not been so well developed? I'm

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talking decades ago. Sure. And that was the field of interviewing suspected persons,

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mostly adults rather than children. Sure. So I then moved into doing work on interviewing suspects,

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probably about 25 years ago or more. Yeah. So that's what I focused on up till today.

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It's such an expansive field. And you sort of, you know, mentioned the particulars there of perhaps

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what techniques would be applied when interviewing children and perhaps what would be applied when

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you're dealing with a difficult subject. But I mean, obviously your methodology, the PEACE methodology,

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are you able to sort of take us through a little bit of that just to an executive summary if one can

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ask. Yes. Well, I think it would be interesting for listeners just to spend a short time

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explaining how it came about. Yes. Very good. And so England and Wales, as far as I'm aware,

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were the first countries that by law had to chape record the interviewing of suspects. And this was

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from 1986 when video recording was extremely expensive. So it only began audio recording. And now,

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of course, there's a lot of video. So from 1986, the police had to audio record that interviewing of suspects.

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And then the government quite rightly and the chiefs of police wondered whether

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that newly recorded interviewing was of a sufficient quality. And there were four studies,

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two by the government and two by police officers for their PhDs. And these four studies on different

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samples and different forces all came to the same conclusion, which was the interviewing though

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it was not coercive. It was not wrong as had been in some cases in the past. Right. And is still the

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case in many other countries. It wasn't very skilled. And then when they wondered, oh, why are the people

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who had the difficult job with interviewing suspects not very skilled? The obvious answer was

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what they didn't have any training. Right. There was no training, no national agreed training. So the

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government and chiefs of police set up a committee of 12 detectives in 1990 to develop a philosophy

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and training on how to interview initially into suspects. And it was those detectives

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who came up with this PEACE method. Right. But why it includes a lot of psychology is that one of the

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people who was doing his PhD on the initially recorded interviews, a wonderful guy called

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Tom Williamson who was a rising star in the London Police. He realized because he himself had a

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degree in psychology that some aspects of psychology in his opinion were relevant. Right.

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To the interviewing of suspects. So what he did was he got a small number of psychologists,

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lucky enough including myself to meet with him on Sunday's in our own free time and gathered together

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everything in psychology and allied disciplines that could be possibly of use to that committee

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who had to come up with training. Right. And in those days, there was almost no research directly

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on interviewing suspects. The skills needed. There was work on how not to do it. You know, it's not a

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good idea to be very aggressive because it's against the law. But what Tom had realized is that in other

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aspects of human behavior where a professional is talking with a person who may not want to tell you

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a lot is in clinical psychology, the training in medics, particularly those who work in sexually

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transmitted diseases where the person you're talking with might want some treatment but

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doesn't want to tell you everything about the contacts even though you need to know who the

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contacts are. So that they can get checked out. Yes. So there were a lot of arenas.

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Obviously what you want to do if the evidence is strong in a democracy where most suspects do have

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relevant knowledge is you want that suspect to provide their relevant knowledge, indeed, including that

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they might be innocent. And so Tom realized that getting that person to change their mind from not

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wanting to tell, to tell, he realized that there was research in consumer psychology and attitude

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change in marketing on how you ethically get somebody to stop doing something, you know, buying

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whizzo and buy something else by your own product. Yes. Yes. And so what we did was we wrote down all this

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or we collected all this information into an unpublished rather big book. And then Tom gave it to

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the chairperson of the 12 male detectives and we had no idea whether they would take any notice

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of it whatsoever. Why should they? Right. Right. They were experienced detectives who mostly started

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policing when they were 18 and in those days. Sure. This is a question of bringing the academia

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well down to what they know. Those guys, you know, had very limited academic experience

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themselves. So we were quite prepared for them to totally ignore what we had propelled. However,

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to my amazement when I worked at the University of Portsmouth, a parcel arrived, a large parcel.

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And it was at the time of IRA and other issues. And so any organization when an unexpected parcel

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arrived security called you. Yes. And say, are you expecting this parcel? And I said, no, I'm not

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expecting a parcel. And they said, well, apparently it comes from the police, but we don't know whether

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to believe that. And I said, oh, yeah, I think it will be okay. And they opened it and it was okay.

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And then it came to me. And it was amazing because the covering note said from the 12 detectives,

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"dear professor, we have decided to incorporate into our training a lot of that psychological stuff.

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But we have been told that our training has to be understood by every police officer

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even early career police officers, some of whom may left school at 16. Right. So we have

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written our draft guidance that's in this parcel in everyday street language. And we are worried

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that we have mistranslated, misinterpreted those high-faluting psychological notions

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into concrete street language. So can you go through it and tell us where we've got it wrong"?

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Right. It was amazing. They hadn't got anything wrong. Fantastic.

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There were a few arenas where I could help improve the communication of the concept.

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And that became what those police officers called the PEACE method. They had realized that to get

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somebody to decide to talk to you, you have to behave in the normal street language,

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were meaning of behave peacefully, not coercively. Yes. But they realized that what they were advocating,

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and this is where the five letters PEACE come in, that you're more likely to do successful if you

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can plan and prepare before you interview. So that's the P. That's the P, yep. Then they realized that at least in the

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UK you're required by law to explain to a suspect why they are in the interview. You're not required

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to tell them everything you know, particularly information that may not be incriminating. They

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happen to be in a certain town on the day the prime was committed. That's not very incriminating.

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They could have been doing anything exactly in that town. So you have to explain, and then the crucial

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point is they realized that to enable a person to be more willing to tell you, you need to engage

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them in conversation, not yet about the alleged crime. But about something from the planning

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and preparation that you know that interviewee is interested in, that knew yourself, genuinely

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interested in. You can't fake it. And so something that almost everybody is interested in if you don't

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know any match between the suspect and yourself is certainly in the UK to talk about the weather,

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or some big thing that's in the national news that almost everybody knows about. So you try

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to engage the person in conversation that will reduce their anxiety, shows your own humanity.

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That normally can be achieved. And then you gradually move into gaining a relevant account.

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This is the A. So this is the A. And there are various ways of best getting the account

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one way is to invite the person to talk you in their own words and not yet question them.

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Yes. So when and if they have finished whatever they want to say, you can then ask your questions

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that come from your planning and preparation. Right. And then normally at the end of the questioning,

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an interview would have finished, but these detectives realize there is more to do. And this is the

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C of PEACE, which is called closure, closure, where you try to provide an effective summary of what

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the person says, which of course, the more they've said, the more difficult it is to summarize it correctly.

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And then you say is there anything more you'd like to add? And quite often if people have provided

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some information, providing an account, hopefully correctly back to them, what we say in psychology

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queues off more things. And they say, Oh, yes. Now I remember Sansa, the front. And then

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when you finish talking about what they've said and if and when they're telling you anything,

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again, you might think the interview is finished, but it's not because the second part of closure is

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to go back to what you talked about in rapport. So if the interviewee, whether suspect in the early days

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or witness or victim has chosen to tell you something that's been difficult for them to tell you,

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you have a professional duty that they don't leave the room in that negative state that's caused by

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them telling you, but you try to help them relax and you might go back and talk about the weather or

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soccer or president Trump for another 10 minutes. So when they walk out of that room,

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they think you've done a good job even if they've in detail confessed to a serious crime.

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Yes. Yes. They feel that they have been treated well. They would tell other people about that

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and so on. So that's the interviewing finished, right? But we have the final E of PEACE, which is

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Evaluation. Obviously, given that the information is recorded, you and others as the investigate,

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can you evaluate the information, but also of course, a recording enables you and a trusted colleague

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to evaluate what you did well so you know you can do that. What you did reasonably that you need

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to improve and if and when you did anything that you wouldn't have chosen to do, let's literally

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call that unskilled or wrong. Sure. I think, oh, yeah, I interrupted too often. Right.

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So that's the PEACE model. That's what those guys came up with in form by psychology. So at that point

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in time, as you say, this was kind of the pioneering aspects of researching into investigative

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interview, it kind of brings me back to a topic we were just touching on before. We began the

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episode, but how did you get into this? Because there's obviously such an interest in field, you were

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right there pioneering it, but obviously you had done some research, try it to this involvement of the new

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methodology. So how did you get into it? Well, I was fortunate enough to do my undergraduate

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three years and my graduate three years in psychology at the University of Exeter, where

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I learned quite a lot about different parts of psychology and the part of psychology to do with

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memory and related topics, which is called cognitive psychology. So my first very junior

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used to call it lectureship. Now they've called it Prof. Junior Professorship. You know, I was

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sitting in my 20s. So it wasn't very grand. It was in cognitive psychology at one of the universities

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in London. And it was a big department and we had like seven cognitive psychologists, some people

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more expert in perception than memory. But one of the other cognitive psychologists in memory,

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with whom I was initially lucky enough to share an office called Brian Clifford. We decided in the

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mid 1970s, just after I'd started there and he started here before me to write a book about the

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psychology of what's now called eyewitness testimony. So there's more about memory and interviewing.

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Right. So we published one of the first books in '78 on that and then I became more interested in,

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oh, well surely a person's produced memory of an event depends upon how well they're questioned.

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Right. So I gradually, in the 80s, got a bit interested in that. And then I was fortunate enough

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to have a job. I enjoyed the job in London. I had wonderful colleagues. But they in the nicest

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possible way said it's time for you to leave because you know, I'd been promoted within. We had a

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wonderful head of department. So that job wasn't available to me and people said, oh, maybe you should

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you know, apply to be a head somewhere else. So I was lucky enough to get a job in Glasgow. And

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as it was being announced, that I was moving to Glasgow, I moved in, I took up the job in 1987. So it

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was became public knowledge in 1986. A person in Scotland who had been very expert on eyewitnessing

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in children, Dr. Now Professor Rona Flynn, that I had met at some conferences, contacted me from

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where she was based in Aberdeen, there were family homes in Glasgow and said, is it truly a coming

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to Scotland? And I said, yes, she said, well, the Scottish government, are very interested in how

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to improve the way that children are questioned and children testifying criminal trials. And so she

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said, would I join with her in submitting a bid to the Scottish government to study children giving

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evidence and probably because of her, we were successfully getting that funding. So we then

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observed children testifying in the old way, which is right in the courtroom in front of the accused,

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possibly in front of the public, obviously in front of the jury. Yes.

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And one of the crucial questions that the Scottish government wanted us to answer was how well

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do the lawyers talk to young children, particularly lawyers who may not have had the benefit of having

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children themselves? So that's where the interviewing of persons relevant to justice initially children.

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That's where it started. Excellent. You mentioned before though, about how there were chances

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and how that opportunity was new to you in the sense of, this is something that hasn't been done,

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it's a chance to go and explore it. And that it must be fantastic to see that opportunity then

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bring you all the way up until today, where you co-authored on these 300 documents that

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quite rewarding in that sense, but also as you say, you're still learning. So,

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well, still learning. And of course, in many professions, including your own,

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one has the feeling, hopefully, an honest feeling that you're doing something of benefit to society.

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And that's always been very important to many people, including myself.

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There's every opportunity to learn more skills, more knowledge.

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Yeah. And that's so important, I think. Again, it's why it's a real pleasure to sit down with

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yourself because I'm sure I'm going to walk away from today and think, wow, there's certainly some

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techniques and ideas that might necessarily cross my path before today.

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No, we'll wait till the end of this conversation if Your presumption is a correct thing.

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I mean, it does bring me onto one aspect. So, the persistent myth about investigative

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interviewing that you think actually harms investigations. Because as I said at the start,

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you've obviously worked with a variety of police forces. Yeah. Is there a persistent issue or myth

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about the interviewing that you think actually harms the process? And what is that?

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Yes. I mean, a lot of things that psychologists have studied and therefore, if we can say,

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have found it be true, are the same as common sense. That's not a waste of time because it supports

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people. If they feel saying in child rearing that what common sense suggests is backed up by

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research, they're even more determined to do what they already thought they would do.

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Indeed. More rarely, psychology and other disciplines comes up with something that's the opposite

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common sense. And this is an example. A good friend of mine in California, Professor Richard Leo,

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is a wonderful guy. But when I'm talking about Richard, he doesn't know this. I sometimes say,

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he's a crazy, crazy guy. People say, well, I said because he's got two doctorates. I mean, most people

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climb intellectually Mount Everest to get one doctorate. Richard's got two, one in psychology and

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one in law. And he's a great writer. And many years ago, one of his most important books,

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probably 2008, something like that, he made the point that common sense tells us

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that if a professional such as a police officer is interviewing a suspect and in democracies,

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most suspects have relevant information and some of them did do it. The common sense view is

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that a guilty suspect, particularly of a serious crime, which might involve 25 years in prison

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or more, the common sense view is they will never spontaneously voluntarily tell you what they've done.

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Yes. That common sense view is actually wrong. And it's taken 30 years of research

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to prove that. And that is still an issue around the world with some professional investigators

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who are left to rely on their common sense because they get no training. They might be in the

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country where training is not important or where there's no money for training as in as in a developing

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world. And what a lot of researchers show, particularly research with me and my wonderful co-authors,

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is that if you are skilled enough to interview in a way following the PEACE method and something

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we might talk about later more recently called the Mendes principles, part of the UN initiative,

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then if you are skillfull enough to adopt what research tells us about interviewing,

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what you do find is quite a lot of people who have actually committed serious crime will tell you.

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Another thing that researchers found out began with my good friend Professor Mark Kebel in Australia

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who was one of the first to get permission to talk with people now in prison convicted of crime.

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Right.

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Therefore most of them in democracy were guilty, not many false convictions.

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What their intention was when they walked into that interview or interrogation room.

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And what Mark found was enormously surprising was that a certain proportion

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were intent on denying but that was about 25-30%.

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An equal proportion said that when they went into the interview they were going to tell the truth

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about what they'd done. These were sex offenders. And then majority said they had not yet made up

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their mind and when Mark asked and his colleagues asked them, "Well, what were you waiting for?"

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They said, "I was waiting for two things. One's obvious, the evidence, but the other one was

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how they treated me." And that how they treated me was first studied by a detective in Sweden called

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Alphomburg. 25 years ago I had the pleasure of being the assessor of all PhD at the University in Sweden.

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And Alph also managed to get permission to do research on people now in prison.

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And in those days in Sweden there was no national training.

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There is now I was lucky enough to play a minor role recently in development of a national

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training and philosophy for the Swedish police. But in those days as it was the case in England

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many years ago the police were just doing their best. And what these people in prison said. So half of them

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through a questionnaire that Alph gave them reported that they were treated in a coercive, arrogant,

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common sense way. Right. The other half said that they were treated politely. Alpf labeled the

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behavior that they taught the police showed them as "humane." Right. And the crucial finding of Alph's

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work was that more of those who said their interviewing was "humane" had chosen to confess.

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So that relates to what Mark found about people in prison. Some of them are willing to tell you

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but only if you behave appropriately. Others have not yet decided so how you behave is also

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important for them. And of course those whose intention was denied, there is research on this. How

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do you assist a person that you think is guilty, who in fact is guilty, who initially plans to

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deny? How do you shift them to deciding to tell the truth? Yes. And so we've done some work on that.

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My last sentence in this answer is "I had the pleasure at Portsmouth of supervising the work of Stabrula

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Suqara and we got permission from a UK police organisation to analyse their interviewing

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and in her final study she analysed a sample of interviews in which the person

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interviewed humanely under the peace method. Initially was not talking or actually denying.

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And then at a point later in the interview shifted to providing information that showed that they

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were guilty. And what Stabrula found was the skills that underpinned a humane method,

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were the ones that were being displayed in the time up to a denying suspect deciding to tell the truth."

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It's quite interesting because for the younger listeners perhaps they might have the life on Mars

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in their heads with the DC's aggressive tone, physical as well, presence being quite important.

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A large person coming into the room throwing chairs around, advocating that I'm serious,

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you're going to shut up and listen to me when actually what you're saying and it's very interesting

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because it can't lead me on to ethical methods and outperforming coercive ones.

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Are the true and tried and tested better way better method?

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Yeah, And what happens of course is that when people receive

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not just what I've said but information that illustrates based on research that are more humane

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ways more effective, then they say, "Oh yeah, I see that. It's not as if it's stupid,

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but they don't think of it." So the common sense of you is the aggressive coercive because

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based on the assumption that people will not tell me.

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Yes. And then when you go through the research and when I'm working with police and other

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investigators around the world who have never had the opportunity to be updated as to what research

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in professional practice tells us. When you explain it, they go, "Oh yeah, that makes sense."

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And they relate maybe to their own personal life when they might have wanted to get a family member,

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perhaps a teenage boy, a son. You have to get your teenage son to tell you about what that funny smell is.

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Without them going and defending themselves, it wasn't me, it wasn't me, it wasn't me. Yeah

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So when you explain it, it then becomes common sense, but it wasn't common sense until you explained it.

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Yes, I think it's very important actually that the general presumption when someone is going to

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interview someone that prefaces, well they're not going to tell me anything, they're not going to open

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up. And I think you're so right, if you are entering an interview with that mindset, you've kind of

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already lost from that starting point because it is that presumption that kills.

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Well, yes. I mean, you will be right, but for the minority of interviewees because following on from

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March, brilliant research, there was a studying Canada of people in prison and then I was lucky enough to

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work with a wonderful rising star in American psychology professor Hailey Cleary who managed to get

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access to more than 500 people recently put in prison in jail, I should say, in the USA.

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And one of the many things we did led by Hailey is to get the kind of information that people in

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prison that the previous researchers had done plus some new things. And even in the USA, which we

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might refute as a more coercive society where people are more used to coercion, even in the sample

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of people recently put in jail, the same finding occurred that it was a minority who went into

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that interrogation. They told us with the intent to deny the majority who open minded some intended

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to tell the truth. So we have now three studies, we need more studies, but they're in different countries.

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That underpins that what you need is a method of interrogating using the American word or interviewing

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which takes account of the fact that some people will deny or want to deny initially,

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some people are open minded, some people want to tell the truth. How do you have a method

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that coax with all three of those? And the answer is the PEACE method indeed. We would like to end on

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sort of the younger listness, people who perhaps going into fields or if it be education,

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we're going to this kind of well, what's a message that you can pass on to them? Perhaps about your own

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experiences, all those looking to go into interviewing, psychology, any rounds like that,

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other words that you could pass on to them? Yeah, I mean, I can't think of anything

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necessarily that they would not have had the benefit of hearing before, but I think to

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be not too fixed in your plans. To have some kind of idea, but to be open minded to something

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unexpected that could be actually quite interesting and fruitful. So

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be open to what people sometimes call, what seems to be chance events.

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Obviously, it has to be something in which you can genuinely be enthusiastic. Yes. So

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to have a rough idea, it's very difficult, I'm thinking back when I was a teenager, did I have a

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neat rough idea of what I was good at? I probably didn't, but if you can get good feedback from people

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you love and trust about what you are good at and what you're not so good at, then of course

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to go down a road in which you have your better skills, I think that would be very useful to help

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people decide what to do. Wise words indeed. Wise words indeed.

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First of all, thank you again so much. It really has been a pleasure to hear your insight

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and wealth of experience. And then there's going to be a lot of people listening who will learn

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from this, especially myself, about those techniques and things that drive the investigative

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interview. So thank you so much for your time. Well, thank you for the opportunity.

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Thank you. Hi, I'm Professor Emma Schultz, Cyberpsychologist at London Metropolitan University. So

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come and listen to me talk on detective diaries. We had an incredible hour talking about the online

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environment, how it may enable crime, when watching Crosses the Line and perhaps becomes snooping.

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And also what happens when the crowd takes control of an investigation.

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Podcast

'Investigative Interviewing'

Professor Raymond Bull

TRANSCRIPT

Professor Raymond Bull (Part 1)

"searching the world for answers"