Customer Reviews

We Get Confessions

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Joseph has been there and done that. The book is more useful than most of the material you get in training because it comes from an officer who has learned through trail and error what works. As a guy who spent 29 years in law enforcement interviewing people, I highly recommend this book.

This is an excellant book written by an experienced cop. He goes through the whole process of getting someone to talk, and to be able to use the confession in court. What I found most interesting in the explanation of the Miranda rights, and the misunderstanding of it. He explains that to read the suspect his rights there must be two things, Custody and interrogation. He says that if you wish the suspect to talk, don't arrest him/her. You can interogate the suspect without custody. If you arrest the suspect and wish to speak to him/her and the suspect requests a lawyer, the interrogation can't be done. Anyways, the book is great but there are techniques missing. The interrogation approach here is basically the nice guy approach. I have read "interrogation, techniques and tricks to secure evidense" the RCMP textbook and "Make'em talk" written by Patrick Mcdonald. If you buy "We get confessions, you should also buy these two other books mentioned. They fill in the gaps by showing the full techniques from the "interogation, techniques and tricks to secure evidense", and the torcher techniques from the military book "Make'em talk" written by Patrick McDonald.

This book is not only a police guide but also a great window into human psychology and behavior. With chapters such as how to put the suspect at ease during an interrogation, oh, excuse me "interview" and how to read nonverbal cues to see if a suspect is lying, it makes me want to put at least one of my ex-es in a room with his back to the door and see if he taps his feet or averts his eyes when I ask where he was on a particular evening.

The author is extremely astute about human nature and uses personal experience and a down to earth writing style that makes this book fun and easy to understand. (O.K. he likes to CAP words a lot, but it ends up being CHARMING instead of annoying.)

I am a police officer in northern Ohio. I was always fustrated doing interviews, I knew I had the right guy, but just didn't know how to get them to tell me they did it. Till I read this book. This book helped me ten-fold with my interviews. This book will not make you an expert interviewer over night. Only time and experience doing interviews will do that. But this book steered me in the right direction. After reading this book my interview techique got alot better and I started getting alot more confessions. The author tells it in plain english and it's easy to understand. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to be a better interviewer.

My local police chief recommended this book when I asked about police interviewing and interrogation techniques. I'm not in law enforcement. I'm a writer trying to get a window into the law enforcement world, and this book, with its realistic view and frank and helpful information about handling suspects and persuading them to confess was very useful. Ignore the sometimes awkward prose. Joseph tells it like it is. The story about the duck, by itself, would make it worth reading.

This book covers legal issues, including Miranda, preparing for court, preparing for the interview and how to take the confession. It talks about real stories including a whole chapter on serial killer Shawcross who killed 13 people and how the confession was taken. It also explains how to find a guilty person from a whole group of employees.

I read this book a few years ago as a primer before taking a military course on the subject. Although this was written from a police perspective, it still proved very useful to me.

The basic rule learned by anyone reverse engineering this book should be: "When being interrogated by the cops, lawyer up and don't say squat!" Chances are, if a cop is talking to you in that setting, he's building a case and perhaps using techniques in this book to do it. Therefore, it's probably a useful book to the bad guys as well as the cops. Since most street level thugs are too stupid to read in the first place, no problem there.

The writing style, if you could call it that, reads like a C average high school term paper, but don't let that stop you from reading it. Though full of mostly anecdotes, the author is nevertheless effective at getting the point across.

The best technique illustrated in the book is the one where he describes interviewing store employees to determine who stole an item from the store. For the last question he asked each employee was what should happen to the thief, if caught. Without fail, the actual thief would suggest that the person sounded like a public defender: the thief should be rehabilitated; the system should be lenient; was it his first time, etc. whereas the employees who did not steal universally said "Fry 'em!" This litmus test is standard practice by police and a highly reliable interview technique. Very simple, but impressive.

The troubling part is when the author, near the end of the book, suggests that the whole process could be avoided if ALL people could be searched anywhere any time, in their homes or persons for any reason whatsoever. Though I sympathize with his desire to rid the world of dirtbags, his attitude is an unfortunate by-product of a profession that by its nature places little value on privacy. The side effect of working in an environment where everyone is drug tested, polygraphed and has a security clearance is that since they place little value on their personal privacy, so too should everyone else. I don't see any way around this attitude; I've witnessed it myself. Fortunately, the author is in no position to change the laws and those who feel as he does are most likely properly supervised.

Reviewers suggesting that this book only makes cops dishonest have simply not read the book. The better the cops get at properly interrogating a suspect, the less chance there should be for a false confession. One reviewer, obviously a liberal-leaning lawyer who's never been a victim of a crime, suggested that corruption was rampant in the entire process. Cops aren't usually the problem nor are their techniques to blame when LAWYERS like Mr. Nifong of the Duke "rape" case are still able to secure indictments regardless of the evidence.

Well worth an enjoyable read.

This book is full of practical information for your interviews. My only complaint is the overuse of CAPS for emphasis. It gets annoying to read. LITERALLY every SINGLE sentence is WRITTEN like THIS. But other than that the information from years of experience is well worth the inconvenience for the eyes.

Great supplemental material for the criminal investigator. For the common folks out there...learn the tricks that the authorities might be using against you! Like some of the other reviews state, it IS a little rough around the edges. It is still better than what you are going to get in many other books.

This book by retired Lieut. Albert Joseph Jr. should be mandatory reading for all new police officers. The book provides many useful tips and strategies for "getting that confession". Joseph goes even further and makes the interrogation strategies come to life with his many on the job examples. The book is a quick read, and is thoroughly enjoyable. As a police officer, I have been able to successfully use many of Joseph's strategies in my investigations, and I highly recommend it to fellow officers. Having read several other manuals on the same subject, I have yet to find one that is as practicle and enjoyable.