Developing a scale to measure the presence of possible prejudicial stereotyping in police interviews with suspects: The Minhas Investigative Interviewing Prejudicial Stereotyping Scale (MIIPSS)

Abstract

If police interviewers hold negative feelings towards certain groups, this may affect how they interview them (either as victims, witnesses or suspects) in that they may not obtain reliable accounts, being the aim of such interviews. The Minhas Investigative Interviewing Prejudicial Stereotyping Scale (MIIPSS) has been developed to assess the level of any investigative interviewers' prejudicial stereotyping towards suspects. The current exploratory study involved semi-structured interviews with twenty people, who had previously been interviewed as suspects in England and also eight very experienced lawyers. Both their views were measured using the MIIPSS before being subjected to a Guttman analysis. Statistical analyses showed that MIIPSS satisfies the criteria for classification as a valid unidimensional and cumulative scale. Therefore, researchers could use MIIPSS as a tool to measure prejudicial stereotyping in investigative interviews. Interviewers could also use MIIPSS to monitor their own attitudes towards certain groups or individuals suspected of different types of crimes

An exploration of perceptions of real-life suspects’ from the Asian Muslim community relating to the police interviewing practices in England

“…For the purposes of deductive analysis, five constructs of MIIPSS (Minhas et al, 2017) were regarded as priori category and therefore the method used was category allocation. The five constructs of MIIPSS are: (i) possessing negative perceptions; (ii) use of schemas; (iii) guilt presumption; (iv) self-fulfilling prophecy; and (v) hostile approach.…”

“…The first author read through each interview transcript and, using these five constructs as coding categories, ascertained whether any of these constructs were evident in each transcript. Essentially, the analysis was identifying the themes evident in the transcripts, consulting the description of each construct (as defined in Minhas et al, 2017), and judging as to whether or not there was any evidence in the transcripts of a specific construct. The examination of each construct is given in Results section under the super-ordinate theme of 'perceived attitudes of the interviewers'.…”

“…The interview could possibly be affected by the interviewer's negative perceptions if one or more of the following indicators were identified by the participant as present during the interview; (i) the interviewer's perceived attitudes towards interviewee were negative; (ii) there was a lack of empathy; and (iii) there was an absence of good relationship (or rapport) between the suspect and the interviewer (Minhas et al, 2017). When reflecting their perceptions of police officers' attitudes, 17 of the participants (81.8%) believed that police officers' perceived attitudes towards them were negative.…”

“…This indicates that negative stereotyping could result in criminal investigation failures which primarily exist within police interviewing context (Milne & Bull, 1999). Minhas, Walsh, and Bull (2017) found five core components of prejudicial stereotyping in investigative interviewing. These components include (i) possessing negative perceptions; (ii) use of schemas; (iii) guilt presumption; (iv) self-fulfilling prophecy; and (v) hostile approach.…”

“…The role of negative stereotypes within the context of police interviews with suspects has received negligible attention. As police officers too are drawn from society, they may equally possess negative feelings towards suspects from certain groups, affecting their thought processes, exhibited in their questioning style when conducting interviews with suspects from certain groups (Minhas et al, 2017). As such, given the identification of prejudicial stereotyping in investigative interviewing, the present study aims to explore the real-life Asian Muslim suspects' perceptions and experiences when police interviewers undertook the task of interviewing them as suspects of a crime.…”