In the October 2011 issue of Blue Line magazine (published in Canada), our company Vice President, Louis Senese, has published an article entitled, Why Offenders Confess. Here are some excerpts from the article:

Understanding the many roads to success

Threats and promises work in obtaining admissions, such as "Tell me you did this and you'll keep your job" or "Tell me you did this or you're going to jail right now I have friends on the inside that owe me, get it?" are illegal. The obvious problem with these statements is that they may cause an innocent individual to admit to crimes they have not committed. To properly obtain a legally acceptable confession, such tactics must obviously be avoided.

The question then becomes, what would legally persuade a guilty offender to confess? In my three plus decades of experience and our firm's six decades of practice we have observed 10 primary factors that contribute to a suspect's decision to admit one's wrongdoing. They are not mutually exclusive and, in fact, several may simultaneously affect a decision to confess. Understanding them will help investigators elicit legally acceptable co-offenders.