Games Police Play, The Pervasive Role of Deceit in American Policing

While at times an effective tool, deception is ethically dubious and can result in severe negative consequences for suspects

Sanctioned by the courts and taught in police manuals, deceptive tactics are employed by virtually every police department across the country, according to a new report by the Cato Institute. Officers seeking to elicit a confession will routinely lie to suspects about the evidence and make statements that imply leniency. While effective at times, deception is ethically dubious and can result in severe consequences for suspects. The United States is an outlier in allowing police to deceive suspects, as the practice is prohibited or highly restricted in most peer nations, including England, France, Germany, and Japan.

First, deceptive interrogation tactics frequently induce false confessions, which are a leading cause of wrongful convictions in the United States. Further, the acceptability of lying to suspects during interrogations seems to encourage deception in other, more troubling contexts. Research shows that testimonial lies, such as perjury in court and falsifying police reports, are commonly employed by officers to secure convictions and circumvent constitutional protections. While such practices remain illegal, testimonial lies are rarely identified or punished. As a result, the justifications and skills cultivated through deceiving suspects in interrogations naturally bleed over into other police work.

Ultimately, the pervasiveness of police deception undermines the integrity and legitimacy of the criminal justice system. It leads to wrongful convictions, weakens civil liberties, and erodes public trust in law enforcement. While there are difficult trade-offs in regulating police deception, its negative consequences require policy responses. Contrary to contentions that deceit is a necessary tool of law enforcement, experiences in other nations suggest that restricting police deception does not hamper criminal investigations. Policymakers should consider measures to curtail police deception, such as requiring that interrogations be recorded, banning or limiting certain deceptive tactics, and increasing judicial scrutiny of interrogation practices.

Introduction

In interrogating a suspect, police often seek to extract an admission of guilt. Officers have found that deceit can be a remarkably effective tool in eliciting confessions from even the most hardened suspects. Since the Supreme Court has put few limits on the practice, the varieties of deceptive techniques police may use are limited chiefly by officers’ ingenuity.1 Officers learn deceptive techniques from interrogation manuals and rely heavily on these practices, often to the exclusion of using other strategies.2

While at times an effective tool, deception is ethically dubious and can result in severe negative consequences for suspects. First, deceptive tactics have been shown to frequently result in false confessions, which are a leading cause of wrongful convictions in the United States. Additionally, training and encouraging officers to lie to suspects during interrogations likely promotes an unduly permissive attitude toward deceitful behavior that carries over into testimonial lying. This includes perjury in court, lying on warrant applications, and falsifying police reports. While lying to suspects in theory (though not always in practice) pursues the truth, testimonial lying subverts justice by creating a false record meant to deceive authorities and courts. Yet from the officer’s perspective, the goal of each type of lie is generally the same: achieving criminal convictions.

Research shows that testimonial lies told by police are commonplace, routinely used to circumvent constitutional protections, and rarely punished due to systemic biases and close relationships between prosecutors, judges, and police. Since officers rarely face consequences for their testimonial lies, the justification for lying and the deceitful skills learned in interrogations naturally spill over to other policing contexts where prevarication remains illegal.

Policymakers may face difficult trade-offs in regulating police deception, but its negative consequences nonetheless require policy responses designed to promote justice, protect civil liberties, and maintain public trust in law enforcement.

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