Abstract
Numerous miscarriages of justice have come to light in Indonesia that result from poor police interviewing practices. In response, Indonesian police are developing training in cognitive interviewing (CI), which serves as an international benchmark for witness interviewing practices. However, little is known about how Indonesian police investigators perceive different witness interviewing practices. Without this baseline data and the appropriate adaptation of CI to the Indonesian context, the new CI method might never be embraced by Indonesian police forces. The present study examines such data collected in a large-scale survey involving 222 Indonesian police investigators and supporting in-depth interviews with six police investigators. Findings indicate that Indonesian police hold positive attitudes towards some principles of CI, but nonetheless value their existing interviewing practices, which lack evidence-based techniques of questioning. We conclude that CI has potential, but the training needs to address practices that are inconsistent with good practice interviewing.
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Availability of Data and Materials
The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
This research did not receive any specific grants from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. However, the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) has granted the first author a PhD scholarship in the Legal and Justice Studies at the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. This article is part of the first author’s thesis.
Notes
First rank officer is higher in rank than warrant officer. It is the highest police rank of the participants in this research. It includes police adjunct commissioner, first police inspector, and second police inspector.
Warrant officer is lower in rank than first rank officer but higher in rank than non-commissioned officer. It includes first police adjunct inspector and second police adjunct inspector.
Some professional communications are protected from police investigation, for instance, consultations between a notary, psychologist, or doctor and their client. When interviewing such professionals, the examining officer must respect the rights of that witness to refuse to provide a statement relating to those confidential communications (see Regulation of the Chief of the Indonesian National Police Number 8 of 2009 Article 27). Other than that, witnesses (and suspects) have the right to provide a statement in a ‘free manner’ in the Indonesian context, which may not be the same as the ‘right to silence’ that is provided to suspects in other countries.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank six senior investigators from the Police Office of West Java Province, who were willing to be interviewed, and to the Criminal Investigation Agency of the Indonesian Police Headquarters including Brigadier General Agus Irianto and Police Superintendent Eko Novan Prasetyopuspito for their assistance in facilitating the data collection.
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Partial financial support was received from UPI fellowships to assist with the preparation of this manuscript.
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The interview and survey data collection were respectively approved by the RMIT Human Research Ethics Committee on 25 June 2015 (Project Number CHEAN B 0000019353–05/15) and on 31 July 2015 (Project Number CHEAN B 0000019353–05/15).
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Muniroh, R.D.Da., Heydon, G. Addressing the Gap Between Principles and Practices in Police Interviewing in Indonesia. J Police Crim Psych 37, 312–324 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-021-09474-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-021-09474-7