Investigative decision-making: interviews with detectives
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JCP-02-2018-0005 |
| Date | 25 April 2019 |
| Pages | 88-107 |
| Published date | 25 April 2019 |
| Author | Elpiniki Spanoudaki,Maria Ioannou,John Synnott,Calli Tzani-Pepelasi,Ntaniella Roumpini Pylarinou |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care |
Investigative decision-making: interviews
with detectives
Elpiniki Spanoudaki, Maria Ioannou, John Synnott, Calli Tzani-Pepelasi and
Ntaniella Roumpini Pylarinou
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to explore investigative decision-making processes in the context of
major crimes as experienced by the law enforcement agents.
Design/methodology/approach –Episodic interviews were conducted with six agents from medium-sized
police forces in the UK. Following the framework of naturalistic inquiry, qualitative content analysis took place
with the assistance of Atlas.ti software. To ensure the validity of findings, the within method triangulation was
preferred, by additionally analysing the interview transcripts with Alceste.
Findings –Findings from this study revealed a variety of internal factors at play, shaping the decision-making
course into an act of balancing various desired goals. Detectives appear to assess a situation based on their
experiences confirming that the naturalistic decision-making model may assist in understanding investigative
decision-making.
Research limitations/implications –Due to the busy schedule of law enforcement agents the number of
participants was limited and availability difficult; therefore, this study can be thought of as a pilot study that will
inspire researchers to use the same method for in-depth understanding of investigative decision-making.
Practical implications –Results captured the ill-defined goals in the police environment and provided ways
of decreasing their impact on investigative decision-making thus should help detectives to understand their
decision-making limitations and strengths.
Social implications –This project will enhance the psychological understanding of investigative decision-making.
Originality/value –This project assists in und erstanding the psychol ogical aspect of invest igative
decision-making during police duty and provides the opportunity to law enforcement agents to re-evaluate
situations in order to impr ove the investigative decision-making proc ess; while adds to existing literature.
Keywords Investigative decision-making, Naturalistic decision-making model, Police duty,
Police environment, Police investigations, Psychological understanding
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Decision-making has been studied across many disciplines and is viewed as a vehicle of
rationality (Bernoulli, 1738; Savage, 1954; Von Neumann and Morgenstern, 1944) made of
sophisticated and axiomatic expressions of subjectivity that can be described by numbers and
formulas. As a psychological process it involves a mixture of cognitive processes, such as
problem solving and information processing (Simon, 1960; Edwards, 1954); or as a collaborative
process that justifies the interrelation of a group (March and Simon, 1958; Janis, 1972). Within
the police force, an investigator functions as a decision maker and usually engages in
time-pressured situations with public demands, complex/ambiguous information, ill-defined
goals and other organisational constraints at stake, consequently such processes might
increase stress and anxiety (Beach and Connolly, 2005). And it has been shown that stress and
anxiety might result in biased decisions that are based on information processing during an
investigation. Similarly, a detective might process the available evidence and information during
events that are associated with stress or anxiety, which at times leads to biased processing of
information (Pogarsky et al., 2017). Biased processing by law enforcement agents can explain
the decision pitfalls (Rossmo, 2005); nonetheless, shortcuts in thinking have been seen as
Received 1 February 2018
Revised 5 November 2018
28 January 2019
8 March 2019
Accepted 15 March 2019
Elpiniki Spanoudaki,
Maria Ioannou, John Synnott,
Calli Tzani-Pepelasi and
NtaniellaRoumpini Pylarinou all
are based at the Department of
Psychology, University of
Huddersfied, Huddersfield, UK.
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important strategies in responding to the complexity of information within the context of
investigating serious crimes (Bammer, 2010). There are various that assist in understanding
investigative decision-making and these are explained in the subsequent sections.
1.1 Investigative decision-making
Indeed, criminal investigations of major crimes, such as murder and organised crime attracts the
media and public, and when criminal investigations failed, it resulted in the scrutiny of law
enforcement authorities (Alys et al., 2012; Fahsing and Ask, 2013). Miscarriages of justice and
failed or delayed prosecutions, including institutional biases, information management failure,
manipulation of evidence and failure to sustain basic investigative principles have been widely
criticised (Alys et al., 2012).
The criminal investigation process in simple terms involves two stages: first, to identify the
suspect and second to build the case so as to justify the reason behind their first decision
(Thibault et al., 1998). Police investigations have been viewed as goal-oriented, such as the
successful prosecution or solving of a crime; although, effective decision-making is not as easily
defined by the goal alone (Fahsing and Ask, 2013) since each stage requires a series of
decision-making processes (Rossmo, 2005). In the past, the common perception was that the
necessary skills for the investigators can be acquired while working (Tong et al., 2009; Morris,
2007); however, modern investigative work identifies many factors that detectives need to be
aware of. Such factors are often administrative in nature, such as knowledge of legislation,
technical skills, workload management and geographical changes (Stelfox, 2009).
1.2 Coping strategies
Rossmo (2005) desc ribed three reason s of ineffective inv estigative thinki ng: cognitive bia ses,
organisational tr aps and lack of unders tanding of probab ilities. Research ( Fahsing and As k,
2013) on investigative decision-making revealed that biases are difficult to eliminate. One of the
more extreme examples of biases produced by these strategies is that the decision-maker
makes a decision considering the extent of the option to achieve a single goal (Baron, 2005).
Gigerenzer and Todd (1999) labelled some of the most common choices and rules as fast and
frugal heuristics. Fast because they approach optimality, but frugal as they require the
consideration of relatively little information about the alternatives (Hastie and Dawes, 2001).
Furthermore, in the past decade some fields have adopted heuristics and have accepted the
cognitive processesthat play a role not only in decision-making, but in many aspects of human
functionality, as well as the fact that individuals may ignore part of the gathered or presented
information, eith er consciously or un consciously. For example, Gigeren zer and Gaissmaier
(2011) supported that indiv iduals and organis ations often rely on s imple heuristics in an
adaptive way. How ever, frequently ignoring part o f the information could lead to more accurate
judgements, alth ough the latter dep ends on the amount of inf ormation present ed and this is
used. Finally, Volz, and Gigerenzer (2012) informed that most studies that focus on decision-
making under risk, or stress in other words, expect that this will also provide an understanding
of the decision-making process in general. However, the latter authors perceive that as humans
do not face situati ons with known risks daily, the b rain does not adapted to them, c onsequently
researchers shou ld focus more on sit uations with unce rtainty rather tha n risk, although i t
has be acknowledged t hat detectives make de cisions both during si tuations with known r isks
and uncertainty.
1.3 Criticism on the traditional decision-making models
The most difficult decisions an individual takes are choices not only about what to do in an
isolated instance, but those that can also affect an entire course of action (Shah and
Oppenheimer, 2008). For instance, the police in the UK use the term “golden hour”to emphasise
the salience of the decision-making during the initial stage of an inquiry, as being crucial to the
success of the investigation (Wright, 2013). Criticism on heuristics and biases started from an
initial stage of their conception (Einhorn and Hogarth, 1981; Gigerenzer, 1998). Shah and
Oppenheimer (2008) questioned the originality of those heuristics because of the actual
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