Forensic Interviewing: For Law Enforcement

Forensic Interviewing for Law Enforcement is a practical overview of interrogation law before guiding the reader into various legitimate strategies that aid in obtaining confessions. Included also is information covering such topics as understanding words used by criminals that aid in identifying them for later interrogation. There is a chapter devoted to analyzing verbal responses to identify the innocent and identifying those who provide verbal responses indicative of someone needing more investigation. The use of a psychological questionnaire is laid out completely for an investigator dealing with multiple suspects in a crime. Finally, there is a comprehensive chapter on the polygraph to inform the investigator what he can gain from its use and, importantly, how to utilize a polygraph examination to reach a successful case resolution.

Kelly D. Harrison was a Department of Defense certified polygraph examiner for over twenty-eight years. He was deployed to the US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for 2004 to 2005 as a member of the Joint Terrorism Task Force to interrogate suspected Al-Qaeda members captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Kelly used the law enforcement model of interviewing to obtain confessions of terrorist group membership, locations of weapon caches, links to other suspected terrorists, and aiding terrorist groups through poppy cultivation and heroin production. Kelly taught interview and interrogation skills at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC), Glynco, Georgia, for four years. Kelly was a guest lecturer at the FLETC for several additional years and currently conducts pro bono polygraph examinations for the Colorado public defender.