The development of forensic interviews: Toward the Multi-Disciplinary Team approach

Abstract

This paper contributed to the symposium held at the 16th annual meeting of the Japanese Society for Law and Psychology, titled “How we utilize the forensic interviews: Skills, cooperation, and the legal system.” Forensic interviews, or investigative interviews, are the method of eliciting as much and as accurate information as possible from alleged child victims and witnesses with the aim of minimizing the stress of interviews on children. The topics of this paper include the outline and characteristics of forensic interviews; the problems in repeated interviews, i.e., deteriorative effects on the accuracy of testimony and secondary trauma; the importance of a Multi-Disciplinary Team (MDT) approach to solve these problems; and the current situations in Japan, including the forensic interview training at Hokkaido University. These are followed by the results from the study on professionals’ perception of forensic interviews and the MDT approach. Measures that can be taken by psychologists to promote the MDT approach are discussed.