Published 14-02-2025
Copyright (c) 2020 Maud Craigie
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Abstract
Indications of Guilt, pt.1 examines the structures of American police interrogation and their relationship to fictional screen representations of law enforcement.
In 2017, I travelled to Texas to train in America’s widely used form of psychological interrogation. The technique has faced scrutiny in recent years due to high false confession rates. The film combines staged and documentary methods to explore how psychological interrogation can function as a process for creating fiction, whilst ostensibly seeking to establish truth.
This text will outline the research-based methodology I used, which involved embedding myself within a law enforcement community, as well as interviewing detectives, lawyers, false confessions experts and academics. I will discuss the interdisciplinary theoretical contexts I drew upon and the expansion of the True Crime genre in popular culture.