Profs & Pints Richmond: The Truth About Confessions

Profs and Pints Richmond presents: “The Truth About Confessions,” an exploration of police interrogation practices and how they can lead the innocent to falsely admit guilt, with Hayley Cleary, associate professor of criminal justice and public policy at Virginia Commonwealth University.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/richmond-confessions .]

Would you ever confess to a crime you didn’t commit? Most people say no, yet scores of research studies show it’s surprisingly easy to induce false admissions of guilt. Real-world data confirm that innocent people have falsely confessed to heinous and violent crimes under the stress of interrogation by police.

Join Dr. Hayley Cleary, an internationally recognized expert on police interrogations and false confessions, for an in-depth look at contemporary American interrogation practices and how they can pave the way toward wrongful convictions of crime.

She’ll discuss how police interrogation tactics both intentionally and inadvertently trade on the psychological weaknesses of vulnerable suspects.

She’ll also look at the risk factors that make people more likely to give false confessions. These can be dispositional, related to adolescence and developmental immaturity, intellectual disabilities, or certain forms of psychopathology. Or they can be situational and related to aspects of the interrogation environment or interactions taking place there, with examples being prolonged custody and isolation, the presentations of false evidence, or implied promises of leniency.

There will be some good news. Dr. Cleary will also discuss the innocence movement to free wrongfully convicted people and also the remarkable progress being made in the development of evidence-based investigative interviewing techniques that promote due process and elicit accurate, reliable information. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

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