| In this paper, I will review the social science and legal literature to address three questions: (1) What are the social psychological causes of false confession? (2) What is the impact of false confession evidence on the decision-making of criminal justice officials and jurors?- and (3) What policy solutions are likely to prevent false confessions and minimize the likelihood that they will lead to the wrongful conviction of the innocent? I will argue that false confessions are caused largely by the misuse of commonly taught, but nevertheless psychologically coercive, police interrogation techniques; that individuals who falsely confess are often convicted -- despite the absence of any inculpatory evidence other than a highly questionable and factually disconfirrned confession and the presence of highly exculpatory evidence -- because confession evidence exerts a strong biasing effect on the decision-making of criminal justice officials and jurors; and that mandatory audio and video recording of the entirety of all felony police interrogations (not just the confession statement) is the policy reform that is most Rely to minimize police-induced false confessions and the miscarriages of justice that they sometimes cause.
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Updated 05/20/2006