Overview

What suspects tell the police may become a crucial piece of evidence when the case comes to court. But what happens to 'the suspect's statement' when it is written down by the police? Based on a unique set of data from over fifteen years' worth of research, Martha Komter examines the trajectory of the suspect's statement from the police interrogation through to the trial. She shows how the suspect's statement is elicited and written down in the police report, how this police report both represents and differs from the original talk in the interrogation, and how it is quoted and referred to in court. The analyses cover interactions in multiple settings, with documents that link one interaction to the next, providing insights into the interactional and documentary foundations of the criminal process and, more generally, into the construction, character and uses of documents in institutional settings.

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9781107059481

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Reviews

'Komter identifies a very compelling and troubling social phenomenon; in its most colloquial sense ... Her analysis in chapters two and especially three is meticulous and informative, contrasting the distinction between what is said and what is written as a matter of lived work.' Patrick G. Watson, Journal of Pragmatics

Author Information

Martha Komter is research fellow at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), Amsterdam. Her research interests include interaction in institutional settings, such as job interviews, courtroom interaction and police interrogations. She has published widely on these themes, and is author of Conflict and Cooperation in Job Interviews: A Study of Talk, Tasks, and Ideas (1991) and Dilemma's in the Courtroom: A Study of Trials of Violent Crime in the Netherlands (1998).

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