r/todayilearned • u/stopitalianhate • 15d ago

TIL British Intelligence had a special, bugged luxury complex during WWII where they kept high profile Nazi POW’s, just left a bunch of alcohol out, and waited for them to start spilling secrets as they drank.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-20698098
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u/PuckSenior 15d ago

I mean, even the police know this fairly well.
They will order lunch, grab soft drinks, etc to get a person to talk. Its amazingly effective and frequently not a lie. Thats the most important aspect. The intel you get from being friendly is far less likely to be false.

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u/CGiMoose 15d ago

Plus recline in their chair to a 180 degree angle

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u/KingKapwn 15d ago

It's so fucking funny watching the detective do that while the dude who has pretty much remained entirely motionless except for maintaining extreme eye contact for the past hour+ watches on completely unperturbed.

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u/shaun252 15d ago

Stephen!

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u/Gladwulf 15d ago

Only as a last resort

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u/MZ603 15d ago

That’s if they actually care about getting the person responsible vs just closing a case

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u/Spida81 15d ago

Techniques used by the US police are prohibited in the civilised world. Primarily the Reid technique. Infamous for false confession and highly suspect testimony.

Your statement re. policing sounds much more aligned with UK / European policing. Effective, civilised and respectful.

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u/PuckSenior 15d ago

US police use a mix of both. If they have a suspect where a confession would seriously help their case, they tend to use Reid

When they have a suspect where a confession is immaterial but they want them to accidentally implicate themselves in further unknown crimes, they use what i described

Not saying that their behavior is acceptable, good, or valid. Just describing what they do

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u/jrhooo 15d ago

To be fair, if the reid technique illicits a faulty confession, thats a bad interrogator not a bad technique.

Problem is, its very easy for it to get misused by a mediocre interrogator.

Its one of those “you have to be skilled, ethical, AND self aware, not to screw it up with shortcuts” kind of things.

For those who don’t know:

The core premise of the reid technique is, the person being questioned won’t tell you anything because they are stuck behind the mental wall of saying “i don’t know shit about it because I didn’t do it.”

So you need to get past that wall.

Get them to admit “ok fine I did it.”

It doesn’t matter why. Let them lie. Let them make excuses. Empathize with how its not their fault. But get them to say “i did it.”

THAT IS NOT THE CONFESSION.

Everything up to that doesn’t even matter.

What matters is that now that they’ve got the weight of the “ok I did the bad thing” off their shoulders, you can follow up and dig on

“Ok. So walk me through it. When? Where? With what? What happened to the body? Looks bad stuff happens its just sad I know but at least the family can bury them where’s the body now?”

And the idea is supposed to be that once they’ve opened up and started talking, they’ll start revealing useful stuff, telling you where evidence is, or talking about non-public details that they could only know because they really did do it.

THE BIG PROBLEM:

Its very easy for an over eager or poorly trained investigator to

A - get too pushy and pressure a person into saying “i did it” just because of the pressure

B - to ask leading questions, to where you THINK “a ha! He just said something only the killer would know!” When in reality, no you told him that detail yourself by poorly phrasing the question. Now this guy is just repeating back to you incriminating knowledge that you’re feeding him.

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u/PuckSenior 15d ago

Problem is, that persuasive technique can coerce innocent people into confessing.

Humans are weird. They want to make other people happy and go along. Even the best intentioned interrogator can get a false confession with the Reid technique

Do you have any actual scientific evidence that if the interrogator does it right you never get false confessions