false confessions
Fabricated guilt statements
False confessions are admissions of guilt by people who didn't commit the crime.
They occur more often than intuition suggests, typically resulting from psychological pressure during interrogation, mental illness, or desire to protect someone else.
Police interrogation techniques can lead innocent people to doubt their own memories: The Innocence Project has documented hundreds of wrongful convictions based on false confessions.
The phenomenon has prompted reforms in how interrogations are conducted and recorded.
- coercedPressured into compliance
- interrogationFormal, probing examination
- good cop bad copAlternating hostile and sympathetic interrogators
- innocentFree from moral wrong
- wrongfulWithout legal right
wrongful imprisonment · conviction · Central Park Five · police · pressure · Miranda · Miranda rights · recant · torture · duress · guilt · admission · statement · detective · suspect · psychological · manipulation · custody
- criminologycrime, criminology, criminal behavior, criminologist, criminalization
false confessionstrue confessions
false confessionsexonerations
Clearances from accusation
acquittals · vindications · vindication · dismissals · wrongful convictions
false, falsely, falseness, falsify, falsification, falsified, falsifier, falsity, confession