5 Lessons I Wish I Knew Earlier About Interview and Interrogation

If I could go back and talk to my younger self as a new police officer, I'd have some words of advice: Slow down. Listen more. Police work is all about the interview (especially then!).

When I started out, I wanted to chase and catch the bad guys. I wanted to clean up the mean streets and I was lucky enough to work in the same Patrol Bureau where I grew up. That meant something to me. If I am able to apprehend sufficient offenders and bring them into the county jail, I will have fulfilled my duty.

I learned early on that just putting cases on someone wasn't enough. There was more to the story, a lot more. I had a huge lightbulb moment when I caught a car burglar. I worked my case, caught him red-handed so to speak, but when I spoke with him for over an hour and a half, I had a lot more. The investigation expanded from a single burglary case to uncovering a burglary crime spree, recovering stolen merchandise, and shutting down a house that was selling these stolen items. The arrest alone would have been a good statistic for the night. However, an actual investigation into the why yielded a lot more for the community.

I was hooked. I wanted to learn all I could about how to effectively interview and interrogate people. I started going to as many trainings as I could, read the articles, bought the books, and borrowed training materials from the department. When I started out, I believed the best interviewers were great "lie catchers." Years later, reading research and thousands of interviews taught me that getting more information is the better skill. I didn't know what Science-Based Interviewing (SBI) was, the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG) hadn't been formed, and legacy accusatorial techniques were the so-called "best practice." As I would learn, these best practices never felt right; they were poor at gathering information, and they weren't my style.

Here are five lessons I wish I'd learned my first days on the street, looking back over more than a quarter of a century. These are desperately what I and others who talk about Science-Based Interviewing across this country are trying to tell investigators, prosecutors, and law enforcement executives. There. Is. A. Better. Way.

1) Silence Is an Interview Strategy

Talking isn't listening. A sharp tongue never beats a sharp ear when it comes to gathering case information.

A 2012 field study by Snook et al. found that officers asked fewer than 1% open-ended questions and nearly 40% of the questions, the top category, were closed-ended. Two studies involving adult witnesses found that interviewers were on average speaking 33% of the time (Wright & Alison, 2004) and 36% of the time (Snook and Keating, 2010). This means interviewers didn't even have the option to remain silent; they were busy asking questions and the next one. What does this mean for investigators in the real world? Less statement evidence. Fewer facts. Fewer investigative discoveries.

In Science-Based Interviewing, silence isn’t a gap; it’s a tactic to be used after great open-ended questions. When you stop filling every pause, people fill it for you with information and clarification. Every interviewee statement is case data that can help you understand what happened, why it happened, and how each piece fits the bigger investigative picture. Interviews generate the critical data that drives successful investigations and better decisions. When interviewers fill the gaps and ask more and more closed-ended questions, the result isn't great case data.

Legacy methods taught us to “control the interview,” but control suggests dominance or compliance; choosing cooperation is better for your case, and it comes from asking better questions and building cooperation. Your goal isn’t to overpower or impose or contaminate statements; it’s to learn as much as possible about someone, their perspective, and ultimatly the incident.

Embracing silence, not interrupting, and applying effective pauses. Real statement evidence, or case data, appears when the interviewer stops talking. The moment you allow uninterrupted space, interviewees will start revealing more of what they know, sometimes more than they intended to share, or just tell you what they think you want to know.

2) Rapport Building Isn't Just Being "Nice"—It Is Effective Interviewing

Rapport isn't just "small talk." In classes taught by ixi to law enforcement and corporate investigators, participants commonly define rapport as "relationship," "liking," "finding common ground," "working together," or "building trust," among others. They’re all right; the goal of rapport is cooperation. The more genuine the rapport, the more information you receive. It’s simple: more rapport equals more information.

Multiple research studies, spanning terrorist interrogations to field police interviews, show that rapport-based approaches reduce resistance, increase cooperation, and improve information yield (Alison et al., 2013; Brimbal et al., 2021). Without rapport, interviewers struggle to overcome suspect resistance in either laboratory or field studies (Kelly and Redlich, 2025). So forget those who call rapport "soft" or, like some instructors, "unnecessary"; they are dead wrong. Effective interviewers know rapport is paramount to great interviews.

So if you’re serious about getting higher-quality information, and a lot more of it, you have to be consistent and conscious about building rapport.

3) Accusatory Interview and Interrogation Tactics Produce Compliance, Not Accuracy

It doesn't matter if your marketing or your mantra says it is "about the truth." It comes down to how you gather statement evidence. We’ve all seen the old-school approach: push harder, reject denials, control the room, induce anxiety, or “break them.” But coercion doesn’t produce reliable information; it produces risk and less accurate information.

Research confirms that accusatorial methods, like maximization and minimization, increase false confessions while decreasing useful information (Meissner et al., 2012; Horgan et al., 2012). Information-gathering interviews, like science-based interviewing, on the other hand, yield more accurate details and fewer false confessions (and more true confessions too!). It’s not about being "soft"; it’s about being strategic.

4) The Strategic Use of Evidence (SUE)

When I do informal polls in our Science-Based Interviewing classes, and during presentations hardly any law enforcement officers, fraud investigators, or corporate investigators have heard of the Strategic Use of Evidence or the SUE technique. This is a crime in and of itself; it is over twenty years old!

One of the most powerful interviewing skills in Science-Based Interviewing is Strategic Use of Evidence (SUE), which involves strategic questioning and understanding when to reveal evidence. SUE isn't just simply a late disclosure of evidence; its about questioning to determine credibility, eliciting more comprehensive accounts, and uncovering statement-evidence contradictions.

Research shows that when investigators gradually move from broad, open questions to specific, evidence-related questions, without disclosing the evidence too soon, they elicit more accurate information, fewer denials, and stronger statement–evidence inconsistencies that expose deception (Hartwig, Granhag, & Strömwall, 2007; Kelly et al., 2013).

5) A Confession Isn’t the Finish Line

For far too long, “getting the confession” was seen as the lone goal and only banner of success in interrogations. In fact, we are obsessed with confessions. They are often considered the end all, be all. However, research shows that exposed lies, statements contradicted by evidence or false exculpatory statements can be just as powerful in court (Brimbal & Jones, 2018). Veteran detectives and who’ve been battle-tested in court know these are anything but trivial and their experiences only reinforce what the research has shown.

If you solely focus on confessions, you are missing the whole other side of the coin. In fact, many of the legacy skills will throw away available evidence hoping for that confession, because after all, that is the ultimate goal, the only goal. Such an approach can and often results in contaminating statements and resorting to accusatory methods, creating a win/lose situation between investigator and interviewee, which often means more interview resistance. I say throw it away because the short-sighted confession seeking didn't even attempt to utilize the strategic use of evidence method. The process of obtaining an uncontaminated corroborated statements through SUE questioning, which gathers statement-evidence inconsistencies (multiple) or false exculpatory statements, was overlooked when focusing on confessions alone.

Confessions, often actually just admissions can be retracted, challenged in court, be unreliable, be coerced, and/or be of no value at all, especially if contaminated. But quality information holds up. SBI moves us from confession-driven to information-driven interviewing, producing stronger cases and fewer investigative failures. Here is the real kicker to the accusatorial interviewing apologists, Science-Based Interviewing gets more true confessions (Catlin et al., 2024).

Conclusion: The Shift From Control to Curiosity

If there’s one thing experience and science have taught me, it’s that good interviews aren’t about control. They’re about curiosity. Every open-ended question, pause, and decision in that room creates investigative data. The more deliberate you are about better techniques, including silence, rapport, questioning, and evidence strategy, the more reliable your case data becomes. Short answer: improved cases.

Science-Based Interviewing provides insight that complements investigative experience. It gives investigators a well-researched, ethical, and effective path to uncover more case details that builds stronger cases, fewer false leads, and greater public trust.

It’s time to move away from legacy accusatory tactics built on pressure, control, and manipulation and toward those built on precision, planning, and professionalism. Because when you focus on learning instead of winning, you don’t just close cases; you open the door to better case outcomes.

Interview and Interrogation References

Alison, L., Alison, E., Noone, G., Elntib, S., Waring, S., & Christiansen, P. (2014). The efficacy of rapport-based techniques for minimizing counter-interrogation tactics amongst a field sample of terrorists. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 20(4), 421–430. https://doi.org/10.1037/law0000021

Alison, L. J., Alison, E., Noone, G., Elntib, S., & Christiansen, P. (2013). Why tough tactics fail and rapport gets results: Observing rapport-based interpersonal techniques (ORBIT) to generate useful information from terrorists. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 19(4), 411–431. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0034564

Brimbal, L., Meissner, C. A., Kleinman, S. M., Phillips, E. L., Atkinson, D. J., Dianiska, R. E., Rothweiler, J., Oleszkiewicz, S., & Jones, M. S. (2021). Evaluating the benefits of a rapport-based approach to investigative interviews: A training study with law enforcement investigators. Law and Human Behavior, 45(1), 55–67. https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000437

Brimbal, L., & Jones, A. M. (2018). Perceptions of suspect statements: A comparison of exposed lies and confessions. Psychology, Crime & Law, 24(2), 156–176. https://doi.org/10.1080/1068316X.2017.1390111

Catlin, M., Wilson, D., Redlich, A. D., Bettens, T., Meissner, C., Bhatt, S., & Brandon, S. (2024). Interview and interrogation methods and their effects on true and false confessions: A systematic review update and extension. Campbell Systematic Reviews, 20(4), e1441.

Hartwig, M., Granhag, P. A., & Strömwall, L. A. (2007). Guilty and innocent suspects’ strategies during police interrogations. Psychology, Crime & Law, 13(2), 213–227. https://doi.org/10.1080/10683160600750264

Kelly, C. E., Miller, J. C., Redlich, A. D., & Kleinman, S. M. (2013). A taxonomy of interrogation methods. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 19(2), 165–178. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0030310

Horgan, A. J., Russano, M. B., Meissner, C. A., & Evans, J. R. (2012). Minimization and maximization techniques: Assessing the perceived consequences of confessing and confession diagnosticity. Psychology, Crime & Law, 18(1), 65–78. https://doi.org/10.1080/1068316X.2011.561801

Meissner, C. A., Redlich, A. D., Bhatt, S., & Brandon, S. (2012). Interview and interrogation methods and their effects on true and false confessions. Campbell Systematic Reviews, 8(1), 1–53. https://doi.org/10.4073/csr.2012.13

Snook, B., Luther, K., Quinlan, H., & Milne, R. (2012). Let ’em talk! A field study of police questioning practices of suspects and accused persons. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 39(10), 1328–1339. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093854812449216