Offender
Profiling Series: Vol 2
Profiling
in Policy and Practice
Edited by David Canter & Laurence Alison (1999)
back to Profiling
in Policy and Practice
Profiling in Policy and Practice
Nigel Fielding
Social Science Perspectives on the Analysis
of Investigative Interviews
Criminology is, by long-established practice, multi-disciplinary.
As such it attends to areas of overlapping interest between disciplines,
tending to neglect the more technical concerns of individual disciplines.
This chapter aims to demonstrate the wider relevance of a methodological
development in one discipline, social science, to criminology and to
the practice of criminal investigation. Employing the example of suspected
cases of child sexual abuse, the relevance of recent evaluations of
the status of interview data is demonstrated in respect of investigators
seeking legal evidence from interviews with victims, witnesses and suspect
offenders. Many concerns raised by social scientists about the quality,
reliability and validity of interview data apply equally to the problems
faced by investigators seeking to interpret statements and non-verbal
action by victims, witnesses and suspects. A profile of the micro-analysis
of interview data is given, drawing on an interview with a very young
suspected victim of sexual abuse. The example illustrates the interpretive
work needed to carefully assess the evidence offered by an investigative
interview. The approach is then related to the psychological approach
to the interpretation of investigative interviews as represented by
Statement Validity Analysis.
Nigel Fielding is
Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute of Social Research
at the University of Surrey, England. His principal research interests
are in policing, qualitative methods and new training and occupational
socialisation, public order policing, community policing, the investigation
of child sexual abuse, and police relations with ethnic minorities.
He is an authority on computer software for the analysis of qualitative
data and director of the UK national centre for qualitative software.
From 1985 to 1998 he was editor of the Howard Journal of Criminal Justice
and is currently editor of the Sage series "New Technologies for
Social Research". He has served as consultant to the Police Training
Council, Home Office, Bramshill Police Staff College, and the official
Sheehy (and the independent Cassels) Inquiry on the Role and Responsibilities
of the Police.
