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Abstract The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (England and Wales) recognised that suspects with intellectual disabilities were ‘vulnerable’ during interviews with the police. However, no attempt was made to specify the disadvantages which might contribute to this vulnerability. This paper reviews the experimental evidence relating to two possible areas of disadvantage—impaired understanding of the caution and legal rights, and susceptibility to acquiescence, suggestibility, compliance and confabulation. A pilot study relevant to a third area, that of decisionmaking, is presented. A fictional film was made of a police interrogation, depicting a male suspect making a true and a false confession. At scheduled pauses during, and just after, the film, items from a semistructured interview schedule were presented. Compared with their average intellectual ability counterparts, the participants with intellectual disabilities (Full Scale IQ: 60–75) were less likely to think that a police interview and false confession might have serious consequences for the suspect. Their views reflected the importance they placed on the suspect's actual, rather than professed, guilt or innocence. Moreover, they believed that an innocent suspect might be protected because his or her innocence would be evident to others. The possible impact of these views on the decision‐making in police interviews of suspects with intellectual disabilities is discussed.
Clare et al. (Thu,) studied this question.