Evaluations of procedural justice: what drives practitioners’ support for interview procedures?

An online experimental survey examined the degree to which 377 international practitioners endorsed procedural justice principles in interviews. Participants were recruited through policing and intelligence agencies in 15 countries in the Asia Pacific and Europe. One section of the survey was administered as a 3 (Coercion: coercive, non-coercive, mixed) x 2 (Crime Harm: high, low) between-subjects experiment to test effects on practitioners’ evaluations of an interview vignette. We predicted that coercion and crime harm would interact to affect procedural evaluations, with tolerance of coercive procedures when the harm caused by a crime was high but not when crime harm was low. We also expected the effect of coercion on procedural evaluations to be mediated primarily by practitioner perceptions that the interview procedure would effectively gather useful information. Counter to these predictions, findings indicated that this sample of experienced practitioners strongly favoured non-coercive interview strategies, and their satisfaction with these procedures was driven equally by perceptions that these procedures were respectful of the detainee and effective in gathering useful information, and less strongly driven by perceptions that the detainee was treated as they deserved. Findings are discussed in terms of their implications for best practice in investigative interviewing.