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Comment by aaron-santos | Hacker News Reader

JCS Criminal Psychology is a fantastic reminder and deep dive into what happens when you talk to police, why you shouldn't, and what you should do instead. It details interrogation techniques [Reid] in a way that made me understand precisely how lying, leverage, and power factor into getting suspects to self incriminate without necessarily admitting guilt. As a side note it was fascinating that multiple times, interrogators lied about realtime, see through walls, global satellite coverage and not once did a suspect question that ability. It was great being a domain expert on something to see exactly how far interrogators will lie in order to elicit a response. (Not a lawyer. Not your lawyer)

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> Not a lawyer. Not your lawyer

You don't need this. "IANAL" was just a (partly tongue-in-cheek) way to provide context so people didn't mistake a poster for a legal expert if they're writing with an otherwise authoritative tone, but really that's just assumed unless stated otherwise, and "I am not your lawyer" is part of a common disclaimer by actual lawyers to make it 1000% clear that they're not providing legal advice in their official capacity and so creating a lawyer/client relationship, when posting their opinions online. No part of this is even maybe needed if you're not a lawyer, and even the "I am not your lawyer" thing is probably an example of excessive ass-covering (but the law's all about that, so, no surprise there)

Thank you. It's a tough habit to break after reading it for so many years.

Oh, I get it. It's a weird self-reinforcing meme (in the classical sense). People see it, so they write it, so others see it, so they write it, some of the ones along the line think there must be a good reason so they're really careful to write it, and so on.

Really similar to how language evolves generally, through misunderstandings or misappropriated terms that come to actually mean the thing they were initially mistaken to mean (possibly losing the original sense entirely, sooner or later), except that in this case it's not actually signifying anything. Just a linguistic tic.

Is this legal advice?

I am a fake lawyer. I am not your fake lawyer. This isn't not fake legal advice.

I have a similar reaction to a lot of YouTube psychology. So much confirmation bias and other nonsense passing for facts. It takes a lot of caution and care to discuss behavior without inadvertently misinforming people. Pinker is really excellent in this regard. Scott Alexander would be another person who is able to reason about behavior without misinforming. I think both should be more active in advocating for criminal justice reform, knowing what they know. Forensic psychology has a lot of skeletons in its closet.

> Forensic psychology has a lot of skeletons in its closet.

I'm in agreement. One minor example, for as much as anyone thinks the Hippocratic Oath has worth - let's be honest, this is HN, there is sure to be a spectrum of opinions - psychologists are NOT required to swear it.

Because the Hippocratic oaths are reserved for doctors of medicine/osteopathy , not for psychologists. Psychiatrists are doctors of medicine, psychologists are not

Just need to add Osteopathy believe that the Subluxation is the cause of disease, just like Chiroprators.

(Modern Osteopathy Schools are basically medical schools, usually for people who didn't get a spot in a med school. Are they as prestigious, or fancy--no, but the graduate can prescribe, and do surgery.)

> Because the Hippocratic oaths are reserved for doctors of medicine/osteopathy , not for psychologists.

Yes, that is the point.

It's not really about leverage or power. It's more of a strategic setting where the winning move is either to be 100% truthful (if you're innocent - and even JCS acknowledges this!) or not to play.

> As a side note it was fascinating that multiple times, interrogators lied about realtime, see through walls, global satellite coverage and not once did a suspect question that ability.

An interrogator can lie about what evidence they have, and yes some interrogators in the JCS videos overdo this in a way that's likely abusive. It can however be strategically beneficial to the innocent if done lightly and with proper foreknowledge, because if you can precisely and vigorously call the interrogator's BS about what evidence they do or do not have, this sets you apart from someone who's just making stuff up as they go along and cannot possibly be able to do this.

That's all well and good, but no one is innocent[1], so the only winning move is not to play.

[1] https://mises.org/library/decriminalize-average-man

Even a 100% innocent person can make trouble for themselves when talking to the police, with virtually no potential benefit in the US. Once you are being detained and questioned by a detective in the US justice system, you should not speak without an attorney, full stop: see https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

Don't do this. If you do, you're playing with fire to satisfy your ego. Very little upside with huge downside risk compared to letting a lawyer represent you.

>It's not really about leverage or power. It's more of a strategic setting where the winning move is either to be 100% truthful (if you're innocent - and even JCS acknowledges this!) or not to play.

It seems to be the opposite. This JCS video shows 100% non-guilty people being 100% truthful, and their truthful statements are regularly seen as further evidence of their criminality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BemHqUqcpI8

Whether you're completely guilty, partly guilty, or completely non-guilty, the safest thing to do is to say absolutely nothing.

>It can however be strategically beneficial to the innocent if done lightly and with proper foreknowledge, because if you can precisely and vigorously call the interrogator's BS about what evidence they do or do not have, this sets you apart from someone who's just making stuff up as they go along and cannot possibly be able to do this.

I really don't think this is true at all. Again, I think it's the complete opposite. I think it's total BS that trying to call BS about evidence would somehow help you in any way. Someone making stuff up as they go along can definitely very possibly do what you say, especially if they're relatively intelligent. And someone being 100% truthful may not be able to do this, if they think the police can't lie, and/or if they know nothing about forensics.

In any of the four scenarios (guilty and try to call them out; not guilty and try to call them out; guilty and don't try to call them out; not guilty and don't try to call them out), you're not going to help your case. The only thing that might come out of it is that you hurt your case. Either nothing happens in the best case, or you hurt yourself in the worst case. The expected value is negative.

It's helpful to know about these techniques, but you shouldn't be taking any action in response to them if you see them. You just have to wait for your lawyer.

Police are not trying to help you. They're looking for things to confirm your guilt. I would think the only thing you could say that might help you is if you have a provable alibi or some other evidence that exonerates you, but in that case the correct action is still always to say "I won't talk without a lawyer". You can give the evidence to your lawyer, who'll then evaluate it, and if they believe it's helpful they can present it to the police and prosecutor and try to get the charges dropped.

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