Psychology of confession in forensic psychology

Abstract

Confession is an important part of the criminal justice system, and it’s an important topic in forensic psychology. Much through history, the overlook on confession has been pretty narrow. If someone confessed to a crime, it was the end of it. They were guilty. However, with the development of forensic psychology, we are now aware of many different types of confessions, including false ones. What does this say about our legal system and what can we do about it? In this article, we examined different kinds of confessions, and why they happen. We talked about the implications for the current legal system, and finally, we made our own suggestions about what can be done to improve the legal system with an understanding of the psychology of confession. Additionally, we examined and compared two interrogation methods, one named the Reid technique which was developed in the 1950s, and the other one named the PEACE method developed in the 90s. We also talked about the global usage of these methods. Finally, we concluded that educating the police and the officials in the legal system is very important because currently, the findings and knowledge about the psychology of confession are not sufficiently applied in real-life situations.