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Planning Tough Interviews 209

NOTES AND RECORDS OF INTERVIEWS

PRINCIPLES

It is important that a full and accurate record of each significant interview is prepared and re-
tained4. The Codes of Practice issued under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, make
it clear that lawyers would always prefer all interviewers to make contemporaneous notes as
they do themselves5. The advice is detached from reality if the object is to establish rapport,
create a free flow of information and get to the deep truth.

If you don’t agree what a discouragement of the truth contemporaneous note taking is, try
pulling out your notebook at the next cocktail party you attend but don’t be surprised when
no-one – except the odd accountant or lawyer – talks to you.

Taking notes puts people off, including the note taker

Worse still, while you are concentrating on joined up writing, you miss important clues.
Contemporaneous note taking is at best a deterrent to finding the truth, and more often
a displacement activity for anally retentive interviewers. It is the worst form of NLP and is
tantamount to saying with each stroke of the pen ‘Watch out what you say, old chum, you
are really in trouble.’

Contemporaneous notes may, in exceptional circumstances, be made by a corroborating
witness, but this practice is not recommended, again for the reason that it deters free flowing
discussion.

THE STENOGRAPHER interview got to the pivotal point and, in
an emotional state, the suspect made his
American lawyers insisted that investigators first serious admission, the para-legal could
had a para-legal sit in on an interview with not contain herself and said ‘Holy shit.’ This
a fraud suspect. She was also a trained threw the interview off track for at least an
shorthand writer. She was told to remain hour and could have been disastrous.
silent, sit outside the suspect’s direct line
of sight and just take notes. When the

However, if a suspect is being totally unreasonable, you may decide to increase his anxi-
ety by pulling out your note pad and committing him to false detail, which he will later find
impossible to defend (see page [xref]).

In the UK you are allowed to tape record an interview without the subject’s knowledge and
for complex cases this is the safe course. However, if a long and important interview is not
being tape recorded, trigger notes (such as names, addresses and other important informa-
tion) may be made, but even then you must take great care. Never write anything down while
the subject is speaking. Let him finish, make your note and then ask the next question.

It is critical that you do not write down anything while the subject is speaking

4 You may use notes made at the time, or immediately after an interview, to refresh your memory when giving
evidence in court.
5 This is why lawyers seldom get to the deep truth