The essence of the article:<p>"He found that the most productive interrogations in terms of information were those in which interrogators essentially acted like therapists. Investigators in Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom are now trained to focus not on extracting admissions of guilt but on gathering evidence. That information can back up an innocent suspect’s story, or it can be used to nail a guilty one."<p>"Hartwig reasoned, the typical interrogation room—claustrophobic, locked, austere—was exactly the wrong sort of space to get someone to divulge information. In a yet unpublished study, she redesigned the space around the theme of openness: open windows, an open book on the table, open desk drawers, “a picture of open water under an open sky,” as the paper describes it. She found that subjects provided more detail when questioned in the redesigned interrogation room."<p>In other words, "you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar". If only we had known this before Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. /s
Shocking, more evidence confirming what we already have known for decades (at least since WWII), torture is one of the least effective methods for obtaining reliable information from suspects.<p>Sadly, I wish the debate about torture didn't focus as much on effectiveness instead of morality and legality (since it is neither moral nor legal).
It's bizarre.<p>Pretty much everyone understands that better information can be extracted by gentle methods than by harsh techniques.<p>That's not why the harsh techniques are used. In the second paragraph of this article it give away the real problem:<p><i>Sometimes I got to the point where I had to literally order them to stop. Even then there was surprising blowback. People thought I was coddling terrorists.</i><p>The priority of those harsh integration techniques isn't to get information. It's a form of punishment, and a threat to stop others acting against US forces.<p>One needs to understand that frame of thought before one can stop the techniques.
Folks interested in an intro to the history and law surrounding interrogation should check out The Illustrated Guide to the Law, drawn by a NYC defense attorney.<p>Here is where the relevant section starts: <a href="http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=2282" rel="nofollow">http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=2282</a><p>It also has sections on a bunch of stuff like...<p>* Probable Cause and Arrest: <a href="http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1789" rel="nofollow">http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1789</a><p>* traffic stops, searches, and consent: <a href="http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1859" rel="nofollow">http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1859</a><p>* self-defense: <a href="http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=864" rel="nofollow">http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=864</a><p>* entrapment: <a href="http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=633" rel="nofollow">http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=633</a><p>* memory and eyewitness identification: <a href="http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=3044" rel="nofollow">http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=3044</a><p>* A flowchart for the 4th amendment: <a href="http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=2256" rel="nofollow">http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=2256</a><p>* A flowchart for the 5th-amendment: <a href="http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=2897" rel="nofollow">http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=2897</a>
For anyone interested in modern interrogation techniques, I'd recommend the book "How to Break a Terrorist."[0]<p>[0]<i>How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq </i> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/How-Break-Terrorist-Interrogators-Brutality/dp/B0085S1S5K" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/How-Break-Terrorist-Interrogators-Brut...</a>