Exploring investigative interviewing: A Dubai perspective

Abstract

Once a crime has been committed and reported, one of the main tasks of the police is to gather relevant information (Milne and Bull, 1999). An essential source for gathering such information is the investigative (or law enforcement) interview (Milne and Powell, 2010). Gudjonsson and Pearse (2011) noted that in the interest of fairness and justice, information gathered by the police has to be accurate, intelligible, coherent, and credible; whilst being obtained fairly and legally. This is especially true for sex crimes (one of the main crime types designated as ‘major crime’ in Dubai), where it is often a ‘word versus word’ challenge between the alleged victim and the alleged suspect (Kebbell et al., 2006). Suspects in sex crimes may also be more likely to deny their involvement due to perceived social condemnation (Thomas, 2002; Ward et al., 1997) which may add a layer of complexity to the interview process. This is particularly true in socially conservative countries, like the UAE. Studies examining police interviewing have been mainly conducted in English-speaking and European countries (Baldwin, 1992; Clarke and Milne, 2001; Häkkänen et al., 2009; Kassin et al., 2003; Kassin et al., 2007; Read et al., 2014; Vanderhallen et al., 2011; Volbert and Baker, 2016; Walsh and Bull, 2015; Westera et al., 2016) or in Far East Asia (Wachi et al., 2014; Goodman-Delahunty, 2016). The findings from these studies may not be entirely generalizable to countries whose culture and policing practices differ. For example, the police in the UAE (and Dubai) are tasked with taking statements only and cannot confront suspects with evidence, as this is part of the Public Prosecution's mandate. This study therefore examined Dubai police officers’ perceptions of interviewing individuals in major crime. This article starts with a brief overview of Dubai, its police force and interviewing laws before moving on to describe the method, results and discussion.