False Confessions: Causes and Solutions

Abstract

Netflix has recently released the show, “When They See Us” depicting the real-life story of the Central Park 5; a 1991 case where 5 young African American teenagers falsely confessed to the attack of a white female jogger in Central Park. This case is was already a commonly known case but has struck a new nerve following the release of the Netflix series, but this is far from being a single phenomenon. It was not the first case of false confessions nor was it the last. It is hard to understand why someone would confess to a crime they did not commit but it happens because of the fragility of the human psyche. It is important to understand what makes people falsely confess to ensure that people involved in the preliminary steps of the justice system are properly trained to prevent, identify and deal with false confessions. This paper will look to examine what characteristics in the human psyche causes people to confess to crimes they did not commit by starting with an introduction to interrogations and techniques used during an interrogation. It will continue, discussing what causes people to falsely confess from a psychological perspective and what types of people are more vulnerable to falsely confessing. Case studies will be introduced and used to examine the result of false confessions. Further, this paper will discuss how the fix the issue of false confessions.