False Confession Day is on the 21st of November. I have always wondered why people make these confessions. I mean the police tell you that you have the right to remain silent. Why don't you just stay quiet? It's so much easier and has a better outcome. A quarter of people are in jail because of false confession. That's why I finally decided to research that!
One of the reasons people confess to a crime they didn't commit is because they are lied to. The police lie to them and say that they have evidence against them. Bob Adams is a Syracuse man who was freed from jail in January. After the police said that they had evidence that he did do the crime he confessed to a crime that he didn’t commit. Even though he knew he didn’t the pressure was just too much. The police lied to him but he thought that it was the truth. After you confess to committing a crime it's nearly impossible to get out of it. The confession is one of the biggest pieces of evidence you could give the court.
There is also another way that police lie to interrogate the person. They tell the person that if they confess then they might get less time in jail. I don't get how this could possibly allow people to confess. Technically they shouldn't get any time in jail because they didn't commit the crime. I guess it makes the person believe that they definitely will have to go to jail and they just want to have to spend less time in jail. Just for your information, in case you ever are stuck in a time like this which probably won't happen, they can't actually shrink your jail time. You will have the same time whether you admit or not. Honesty, this way doesn't seem smart to me but if it works, it works.
The last reason is pressure. If your parents just died and your not 20 yet, you're scared, you're stress, and you have no idea what to do next. Then the police come and think that you killed your mother and start to interrogate you. They keep asking you the same questions over and over again. The person's mind just stops working. Finally, you confess because the interrogation is too much for you. Huwe Burton was a 16-year-old boy who confessed to killing his mother. He was scared and stressed so after many interrogations he couldn’t take it anymore and confessed. After that, he spent 20 years in prison for something he didn't go until he was finally free. I could definitely see myself confessing because of this reason. The police officers will only leave you alone if you say yes. After all of that chaos, you just want to be left alone so you say yes instead of thinking.
Lots of teenagers end up getting hurt because of false confession. People make these confessions because of pressure. The thought that they might end up in jail gets to them. They will try anything to get out of it even when they know that they didn't actually do the crime. The conclusion is that pressure is what police use to get you to "tell the truth". What the police are doing isn't wrong but you should always check to make sure that the criminal you have is a criminal.
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