Ahead of Wrongful Conviction Day, New Report Examines Police Interrogation Policies Nationwide

As communities mark International Wrongful Conviction Day on October 2, a new report from the Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke Law examines how police departments across the country can strengthen safeguards against false confessions and reduce the risk of wrongful convictions.

Police Interviewing and Interrogation Policy: Evaluating Written Policies in the Fifty Largest U.S. Jurisdictions, authored by Wilson Center Policy Analyst Marcus Pollard; Ali Schmidt, Duke Law J.D. ’25; Rebecca Brown; and Wilson Center Faculty Director Brandon Garrett, evaluates the written interrogation policies of law enforcement agencies serving the 50 most populous U.S. cities.

The report compares those policies with recommendations from the American Psychology-Law Society’s (AP-LS) 2025 scientific review of police-induced confessions, which synthesizes decades of research on the causes and prevention of false confessions. The Wilson Center’s analysis finds notable gaps between current written policies and these scientific recommendations, while also identifying examples of agencies that have adopted stronger safeguards.

“Wrongful convictions can have many contributing causes, but false confessions are particularly troubling because a confession can appear to be compelling evidence even when it is false,” said Marcus Pollard, Policy Analyst at the Wilson Center for Science and Justice and lead author of the report. “Our goal with this analysis is to identify concrete ways that police agencies can strengthen their written policies, incorporate what we know from research, and improve the reliability of interrogations.”

The report evaluates policies in four key areas: recording interrogations; safeguards against investigator bias and contamination; limits on accusatorial interrogation tactics; and protections for juveniles and vulnerable adults.

Among the report’s findings:

• The clearest alignment with AP-LS recommendations are in policies regarding electronic recording, with 72% of agencies requiring some form of recording
• Far fewer agencies have policies outlining safeguards against false confession and limiting accusatorial tactics. For example, only 12% have policies designed to limit contamination, such as inadvertently providing suspects with details of a crime that only the perpetrator would know. Just 16% have policies limiting the use of false-evidence ploys. And about half of agencies limit the use of threats.
• Juvenile protections are more common: 70% of departments permit an attorney or guardian ad litem to be present during juvenile interrogations and 98% allow an adult such as a parent or guardian. Yet only 14% of agencies have similar policies protecting vulnerable adults, including those with disabilities.

In order to prevent false confessions and potential wrongful convictions, the report identifies four areas where agencies can further strengthen their policies:

• Record interrogations on video. Recording can protect both suspects and investigators and provide courts with a fuller account of how an interrogation was conducted. The report recommends recording suspect interviews and interrogations from a neutral camera angle that captures both the suspect and the interrogator.
• Build in safeguards. Agencies can require investigators to establish an evidence-based suspicion before conducting guilt-presumptive interrogations, limit the disclosure of crime details that could contaminate a confession, and require corroboration of confessions.
• Set meaningful limits on accusatorial tactics. Policies can address the length of interrogations and detention, false-evidence ploys, minimization techniques that imply leniency, and threats.
• Strengthen protections for vulnerable people. Agencies can provide additional safeguards for young people and vulnerable adults, including requiring qualified defense counsel or an appropriate support person during questioning.

“Wrongful Conviction Day is an opportunity to look not only at cases in which innocent people have been exonerated, but also at the systems and practices that can contribute to those outcomes in the first place,” said Brandon Garrett, Faculty Director of the Wilson Center for Science and Justice, David W. Ichel Distinguished Professor of Law at Duke Law, and co-author of the report. “When a person is wrongfully convicted, not only is an innocent person punished, but the actual perpetrator of the crime is not held accountable. Strengthening interrogation policies can help prevent both outcomes—protecting innocent people while helping law enforcement identify and hold the right person accountable.”

“Evidence-based interrogation practices can serve both law enforcement and the public,” Pollard added. “The objective is not simply to prevent false confessions. It is to help investigators obtain more reliable information, avoid focusing on the wrong person, and strengthen the accuracy of the criminal legal system.”

Read the report: Police Interviewing and Interrogation Policy: Evaluating Written Policies in the Fifty Largest U.S. Jurisdictions