> U.K. police, who regularly use sketching interviews and work with psychology researchers as part of the nation’s switch to non-guilt-assumptive questioning, which officially replaced accusation-style interrogations in the 1980s and 1990s after scandals involving wrongful conviction and abuse.
I wonder if this explains a trope I notice in British detective TV shows but not in American ones. Writers have the fictional detectives speculatively throwing around accusations whenever they have a vaguely plausible guess as to what might have happened. Apparently in the hopes that it will scare the accused into confessing right then and there.
Ten minutes into the investigation, and based on no evidence, the detective will say something like, "You were in love with your best friend's husband, weren't you? You wanted him for yourself, and jealousy is the reason that you killed her, isn't it?" And the just-accused person will reply, "Hardly. It's well known among all of us that I felt he was a terrible husband and encouraged her to leave him." And then both will continue on as if all that was no big deal and you can't fault the detective for asking.
Was this once a real technique, and now there's a cultural perception of it still lingering? I'm sure fictional portrayals are inaccurate everywhere, but this particular thing seems unique to British shows.
I wonder if this explains a trope I notice in British detective TV shows but not in American ones. Writers have the fictional detectives speculatively throwing around accusations whenever they have a vaguely plausible guess as to what might have happened. Apparently in the hopes that it will scare the accused into confessing right then and there.
Ten minutes into the investigation, and based on no evidence, the detective will say something like, "You were in love with your best friend's husband, weren't you? You wanted him for yourself, and jealousy is the reason that you killed her, isn't it?" And the just-accused person will reply, "Hardly. It's well known among all of us that I felt he was a terrible husband and encouraged her to leave him." And then both will continue on as if all that was no big deal and you can't fault the detective for asking.
Was this once a real technique, and now there's a cultural perception of it still lingering? I'm sure fictional portrayals are inaccurate everywhere, but this particular thing seems unique to British shows.