Psychology of false confessions
Over the last twenty years, DNA technology has greatly improved leading to a growing number of cases being thrown into disarray due to scientific evidence used to prove innocence. False confessions were initially used to condemn suspects in the lack of scientific evidence as is the case before the discovery of DNA technology. One of the high-profile cases which occurred in a New York park involved a couple of suspects who admitted to raping an unsuspecting victim. DNA evidence later showed that none of them was guilty of the offense. Interestingly, one of the suspects in the attack had an IQ of 87, and another one was only 16 years of age with reading level of a second-grade student. Psychologists have pointed towards intelligence being a great factor contributing to the probability that a suspect will falsely admit guilt (Garrett, 2015).
It’s hard to estimate the number of false confession across the US but a review of ten years worth of murder cases revealed that in 247 instances the defendants gave a false confession. Psychologists over the last couple years have been trying to understand the psychology involved when someone falsely admits to guilt. Suspects with low intelligence levels are particularly vulnerable to succumbing to pressures of police interrogations. This was attributed to their lack of comprehension of the consequences of admission of guilt (Brainerd and Reyna, 2015).
Furthermore, the long hours of police investigation have been identified by psychologists to be a likely contributing factor to false confessions. Suspects who undergo lengthy interrogations have a higher likelihood of admitting guilt in an attempt to bring the psychologically draining investigations to an end. Psychologists have discovered that suspects may confess as an escape hatch with some admitting that they “just wanted to get home.” Clearly, in such circumstances, the victims do not completely comprehend the consequence of admitting guilt which points towards psychological issues in the suspects (Redlich et al., 2017)