Written by Ashely Rosenbaum
Students in the criminal justice program at Harding can take a course that will teach interviewing and interrogation techniques. The course will focus on obtaining confessions from criminals, interacting face-to-face with criminals and interacting with victims, witnesses and criminals. The course will take place spring 2010.
The course was designed to help students with the “interaction involved in the face-to-face interview and interrogation; develops knowledge of behavioral reactions of the suspect, victim or witness; develops an understanding of likely response to the behavior of the interviewer; develops a basic skill level in conducting an interview or interrogation as well as testifying in court; includes role playing to reinforce interview and integration techniques” according to the course description.
Director of the Criminal Justice Program BJ Houston teachers the new class that opens this spring. To prepare for teaching this course, she attended two interview and interrogation seminars.
“I went to two interview and interrogation seminars and attended one in Vegas and went to one in another part of the state,” Houston said. “I attended the John E. Reid and Wicklander-Zulawski seminar. These seminars basically dealt with the same things. The courses teach you how to interview a perpetrator or suspect or interrogate. I suppose you could do the same thing with a witness or victim, but you typically don’t.”
Houston believes students will benefit from the course in a variety of ways.
“The course will give them a heads up on training they will receive after they get out into the real world and have their specific training in law enforcement,” Houston said. “They already want to learn the procedures and techniques that are the ‘hallmark’ of interview and interrogation, and that is what they will be learning at Harding University. I give the students a hard time and tell them that I am using the techniques on them. When you use these techniques to spot if someone isn’t being truthful, you are looking at body language, voice inflection, eye movement and all the things that deal with reading people and determining whether or not they are being truthful. “
Houston believes the course would be beneficial for people who are not in the criminal justice program as well. The skills of perception and human interaction are focuses of the course.
“I absolutely believe that this course would be beneficial for people that are not in the Criminal Justice program,” Houston said. “It would be useful for anyone that would be dealing with people in pretty much any aspect. It will help you be a more perceptive consumer as well, like when you are buying a car, for example. It will also be great for just dealing with people in general and will help with perception.”
Houston believes that students in this course would be the Christians who are needed in criminal justice.
“We need more Christians in the Criminal Justice system,” Houston said. “We want those people who are Christians to go out and do the job right.”
