Interpreter linguistic intervention in the strategies employed by police in investigative interviews

Police interviews are high-stakes activities that bear legal consequences when the cases move to court proceedings. A wide range of literature exists on police interviewing strategies aiming to obtain complete information from the interviewee; however, this literature focuses primarily on monolingual settings only. This paper reports on an empirical study examining the word choices made by interpreters of 11 selected languages in three scripted police interview excerpts. The study found that considered verbal strategies deliberately employed by police in investigative interviewing may be interfered with by the interpreter in a bilingual setting. The authors discuss the implications of such linguistic intervention for police interview outcomes and propose improvements for the training of interpreters and police.