Power Dynamics in Police Interviews: A Comparison Between Witness and Suspect Interviews in Canada

Interviewing is a critical component in police investigation and the judicial process. As a type of institutional discourse, police interviews are asymmetrical talks, in which participants are expected to speak and act within their own institutional and discursive role (Thornborrow 2002). In general, the interviewers have more power to influence and control the interaction through different discursive practices (Fairclough 1989; Thornborrow 2002), such as the selection of topics, the choice of question types, including questioning sequences, and the overall control of the duration of talk by other participants. However, it is not uncommon to see resistance from the interviewees too. There are typically two types of police interviews: interviews of suspects and interviews of victims or witnesses. Despite the different goals and purposes, studies have shown that suspect and witness interviews in Canada share similar features, such as the dominance of the interviewers, reliance on closed-ended questions and frequent interruptions from the interviewers to name a few. These practices raise concerns as they can contaminate interviewees' memory and may lead to false confessions (Snook et al. 2012; King & Snook 2009; Wright & Alison 2004).

With limited studies focusing on victim or witness interviews, the resistance strategies of interviewees and, more generally, police interviews in Canada, this major research paper explores power constructions and resistance in interviews of suspects and witnesses in Canada through a high-profile murder case. Section 2 discusses some relevant literature related to the theoretical frameworks and police interviews in Canada and defines some key concepts. Section 3 introduces the data and the data collection, transcription and coding process. Section 4 focuses on the analysis of individual interviews, with excerpts from the data. Section 5 compares the discursive features across interviews. Finally, Section 6 summarizes the findings and briefly discusses the limitations and future research ideas.