COMPUTER SAID YES. WHY PROFESSING IGNORANCE DOES NOT LEAD TO BLISS
An investigators story
Hello my name is……. well, that doesn’t really matter it was years ago now.
Looking back, I was one of a number of investigators in one of a large number of criminal investigations into fraud across the UK, which has, in recent times, been billed as one of the biggest miscarriages of justice ever seen.
I had been provided with evidence by my organisation which on the surface of it led me to believe that the suspect I was about to interview was guilty.
I allowed myself to slip into confirmation bias – a tendency to seek out and prefer information that supports my belief that the suspect has committed that offence – and all my questions became aimed at getting the suspect to admit to the offence.
The suspect however gave a defence that it was not them but a faulty system to blame. I had been told this nonsense about a faulty system before by other suspects – so I thought ‘here we go again’ my bias told me that the system could not be faulty, because my company had told me it was not faulty. I also had automation bias favouring computer generated evidence over flawed human behaviour. As a result of these biases, I dismissed the information given by the suspect and continue to ask questions based on my belief that the suspect was guilty.
The suspect even offered me the opportunity to search their home and bank accounts to show me they had not taken the money, however I chose to follow my fast System 1 thinking without taking the time to use my slower System 2 thinking, why? well I was convinced that they had committed the offence and become more and more frustrated that the suspect would not confess.
Rather than follow Criminal Procedures Investigation Act [CPIA] guidelines [covering these types of investigations] that told me that the role of the investigator is to follow all reasonable lines of enquiry towards and away from the suspect, I blindly followed what my company had told me.
The interview ended and I recommended that a private prosecution was taken against the suspect.
I returned to my office to pick up the next case which lo and behold was another similar fraud based on the read out from the system that these suspects kept claiming was faulty but that I was repeatedly told was not.
“So, I sit here now being questioned by barristers and lawyers on live TV, wishing that I had followed the CPIA guidelines and indeed common sense and pushed back harder on my organisation to follow that reasonable line of enquiry away from those many suspects that I helped send to jail.”
For some reason, the denials, and defences from the now growing number of suspects was continually dismissed by the organisation’s lawyers. I did not really question this.
Did they do it? - Computer said YES! - Move on to the next case
So, I sit here now being questioned by barristers and lawyers on live TV, wishing that I had followed the CPIA guidelines and indeed common sense and pushed back harder on my organisation to follow that reasonable line of enquiry away from those many suspects that I helped send to jail.
Next it is the turn of the lawyers that I sent my files to, who prosecuted the suspects, to explain how they carried out their continuing duty under CPIA to disclose materials which satisfied the prosecution test and those lawyers that represented my organisation at the time, to answer questions on why they kept telling me that everything was fine with the system, because what I am reading and watching on the news is a whole different story.
This should be interesting…….
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