Family Badge . . . forensic hypnosis

Family Badge reports that officers are undergoing training in investigative and forensic hypnosis. This can be a very good thing when used appropriately.

When performing forensic hypnosis, it is very important not to contaminate the witness testimony.

The hypnotist should guide the session but never lead it, never ask leading questions, just like in good investigation work but even more so when working with folks in a heightened state of suggestibility. Any testimony of evidence should be independantly confirmed as well. Hypnotic testimony may lead to other evidence but it is not evidence in and of itself.

A couple weeks ago, my adult class was discussing just this. One of the students is a high-ranking police officer and he lamented that there just aren’t enough people in Taiwan who can do this sort of hypnosis . . . not just any hypnotist should do it as the person really needs to understand the principles of hypnosis as well as evidence gathering so as not to contaminate testimony. A few folks advocate hypnotizing suspects but everything I’ve seen and experienced with the subject strongly suggests this is inappropriate as most folks are able to lie or confabulate under hypnosis. It is far more reliable to use these methods with witnesses rather than direct suspects. In my opinion.

All the best,
Brian