Interviewing suspects of crime: The impact of PEACE training, supervision and the presence of a legal advisor

Abstract

In 1992, the police service of England and Wales adopted PEACE as a framework for interviewing suspects. This study was to evaluate the impact of PEACE interview training, workplace supervision and the presence of a legal advisor on the performance of police officers' interviewing suspects. One hundred seventy-four real-life interviews with suspects were obtained from six police forces in England and Wales. Officers trained and untrained in PEACE, and from police forces that did or did not have an interview supervision policy conducted the interviews. Interviews in this sample were generally of average standard. Whilst PEACE-trained officers conducted longer interviews, there were no other statistical differences dependent on training. Nor were there any statistical differences dependent on the presence of a legal advisor. A workplace supervision policy was found to be related to performance, particularly during the engage and explain phases of the interview. Supervision also appeared to provide some safeguards for suspects who did not have a legal advisor. Because the performance of PEACE-trained officers did not differ from those who had not received this training, further improvement in training is needed, especially regarding a number of communication skills. It is argued that such improvement would be facilitated by a more consistent approach to interviewer training and to the effective supervision of interviews. © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.