Gisli Gudjonsson's penchant for corroboration.
Standard police tactics can pull false confessions from adults with intellectual disabilities—so behavior analysts must push for interview safeguards.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Delong (2007) looked at how police question people with intellectual disabilities.
He wrote a short paper that warns standard tactics can trick these adults into saying they did something they never did.
The work is theory only—no new data, just a close reading of past cases and interview rules.
What they found
The paper says long interviews, leading questions, and fake evidence make adults with ID agree with whatever the officer wants.
Once the confession is on tape, juries believe it, even when it is false.
How this fits with other research
Perske (2011) gives the same warning but shows a real tragedy: Joe Arridy, a man with ID, was executed after police got a false confession.
Simpson et al. (2001) add that most studies on offending by adults with ID ignore race, class, and how police treat these adults—so we still do not know how often false confessions happen.
Lancioni et al. (2011) seem to push the other way: men with ID who offend actually score higher on moral-reasoning tests than non-offenders. This does not cancel the false-confession risk; it just says some adults with ID can think through right and wrong when they are not under pressure.
Why it matters
If you assess or serve adults with ID, know that police interviews can sound fair but still be coercive. Ask for a lawyer, an advocate, or you to sit in. Write a one-page brief you can hand to officers that lists the adult’s communication needs and preferred supports. It may stop a wrongful arrest before it starts.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Even so, some investigators—but not all—fail to follow these steps with persons who have intellectual disabilities. Some—but not all—misread the defendant’s differences and come to believe, really believe that they ‘‘have the man.’’ Some—but not all—question them relentlessly for long hours until a confession is squeezed out of them. They do it even when no physical or witness evidence connects the person with a disability to the crime. Fortunately, in the last 10 years, interrogations leading to false confessions is being exposed to the light of day as never before.
Intellectual and developmental disabilities, 2007 · doi:10.1352/1934-9556(2007)45[140:GGPFC]2.0.CO;2