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The impact of rapport-based interview techniques on suspect use of counter-interrogation tactics (CITs) was examined in an operational field sample of 181 police interrogations with international (Al-Qaeda and Al-Qaeda-inspired), paramilitary, and right-wing terrorists. The observing rapport-based interpersonal techniques (ORBIT) framework was used to code rapport-based interrogator skills along 2 dimensions: motivational interviewing skills and interpersonal competence (use of adaptive interviewing behaviors and absence of maladaptive interviewing behaviors). Two components of suspect behavior were measured using the ORBIT tool: interpersonal behavior and counter-interrogation techniques (passive, verbal, passive verbal, no-comment, and retraction). Structural equation modeling revealed that adaptive interviewing was directly associated with decreases in passive CITs but, counter to expectations, increased the prevalence of passive verbal responding. Interrogator use of motivational-interviewing-consistent skills was directly associated with improved adaptive interviewing; reduced maladaptive interviewing; and decreases in passive, verbal, and no-comment CITs, but was associated with higher rates of retraction. Motivational interviewing skills also had a significant indirect effect on reducing passive and increasing passive verbal CITs through its indirect effect on adaptive interviewing. Overall, findings indicate that adopting an adaptive rapport-based interrogation style in which suspects are treated with respect, dignity, and integrity is an effective approach for reducing suspects’ use of CITs.

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Checklist-based screening instruments have a role in the assessment of mentally disordered and criminal offenders, but their value for screening for vulnerability to violent extremism remains moot. This study examined the effectiveness of using the Identifying Vulnerable People (IVP) guidance to identify serious violence in persons convicted or killed in the process of committing a violent-extremist offense using open-source intelligence (i.e., publicly available archival material). Of 182 specific participants identified, specific offense data was available for 157 individuals. Blind kappas for individual items of the 16-item IVP guidance ranged from 0.67 to 1.00. IVP guidance was more reliable when applied to conventional terrorist groups, but missing information significantly reduced reliability. Weighting items thought more central to violent extremism (death rhetoric, extremist group membership, contact with recruiters, advanced paramilitary training, overseas combat) did not improve reliability or prediction. Although the total unweighted IVP score predicted some acts of violence, test effectiveness statistics suggested IVP guidance was most effective as a negative predictor of grave outcomes, and best applicable to conventional ideological violent extremists who came to this position through typical “terrorist” trajectories. Results suggest the IVP guidance has potential value as an initial screening tool, but must be applied appropriately to persons of interest, is strongly dependent on the integrity and completeness of information, and does not supercede human-led risk assessment of the case and acute risk states.

Reality monitoring lie-detection studies, like others that use raw frequency counts as primary data, seem consistently to underestimate the influence of the length of (or number of words in) the account. The decisions as to whether to standardise or not, or what method of standardisation to use, are rarely empirically driven, so it is still unclear as to whether reality monitoring is more effective before or after standardisation for length. Another factor that also has received little attention in the reality monitoring literature is whether statements are produced orally or in written form. To investigate these issues, 42 autobiographical statements, 21 truthful, and 21 deceptive, including 22 oral and 20 written accounts, were analysed before and after word count standardisation. Results showed that reality monitoring criteria only discriminated significantly between truthful and deceptive accounts when no attempt to control for word count was made. Also, oral statements contained more evidence of reality monitoring criteria before standardisation for word count, whereas written statements were denser and contained more evidence of reality monitoring criteria after standardisation. Implications are discussed.