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Administrative & Investigative Interviewing & Interrogation Techniques

Interviews; whether for administrative or investigative purposes as well as Interrogations, are pursued specifically for an admission of guilt or a confession. This is clearly an art as well as a science.

  • Whether the individual is the subject of an interrogation; or that of an administrative or investigative interview, the behavior of the individual as well as how they will respond to your questions along with the outward signs and symptoms of the emotional and physiological stress associated with the questioning will provide the interviewer with important insights into the nature and scope of their responses and to whether or not their might be deceit in their statements.
  • Behavioral clues; body language; cognitive loading; the individual’s utilization of words, phrases and verbiage; the flow of information based on recollections from memory vs. information fabricated by the individual, and relevant informational timelines will afford the observant interviewer or interrogator with insights into when an individual is being deceitful.
  • No single clue will clearly identify deceit. However; when multiple “clues” have been presented the door has been opened for the interviewer or interrogator to return to the questions which produced the specific behavioral or informational clues. This program will teach you what to look for and how to recognize them.
  • This seminar will address how to identify the subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, warning signs when an interviewee or subject is being deceitful or one who is consciously withholding information. The following bullet list is an abbreviated overview of the topics to be addressed in our seminar:
  • Types of Interviews:
    • Administrative & Investigative
  • Interrogations:
    • How interrogations differ from interviews
  • Value & Necessity of Rapport:
    • Avoiding confrontational interactions
  • Behavior Provoking Questions:
    • Inducing emotional and physiological stress
  • Primacy Effect:
    • Positive & Negative Impacts of the Primacy Effect
  • Miller’s Law:
    • The assumption that the statement is True, but of what??
  • Oral Statements:
    • Verb Tense; Word Usage; Past, Present, Future Tenses; Text Bridges
    • Processing from Memory; Cognitive Processing & Cognitive Load
  • Written Statements: Punctuation, Capitalization, Brevity, Extraneous Details
  • Word Clues & Qualifiers
  • Distance in Communication
  • Sequence of Events
  • Truth Bias; Obfuscation & Omissions
  • Behavior & Statements of Truthful vs. Deceptive Individuals
  • Perception Management
  • Sensory Perceptions & Memory Recall
  • Behavior during the Interview or Interrogation
    • Behavioral Indicators and the Analysis of the Subject’s Behavior