Berätta din sanning : En förhörsledares projekt i förhör med misstänkt person

Sammanfattning: From general conditions when interviewing suspect persons, in my thesis I want to let an individual police interviewer emerge. The aim of the study is to describe the police interviewer’s actions in the interview situation. I strive to explore, identify and interpret the meaning of these actions during the interviews. I here choose to regard the interviewer as the actor in the interaction and I want to examine what he is doing when interviewing. From this general aim I would like to highlight the following processes: • The aims of the police interviewer when conducting the interview and his actions directed towards those aims. • The dignity, relation and interaction between different actions. • How the interviewer handles the complexity emanating from different demands and dilemmas of the interview situation. My data consist of a series of interviews with a man suspected of homicide. The interviews are documented in writing and on tapes/videotapes. When interpreting data I take my startingpoint in constructivism, where the individual is regarded as an active creator of meaning and where internal mental representations of phenomena form a basis for action. In the interaction with another person new mental constructions are formed. As a tool for my analysis I use an intentional model of explanation, where an action is regarded as meaningful and understandable by assuming that the actor has an intention for acting. The observed behaviour is the external, visible aspect of the action. To be able to understand its meaning, the researcher has to draw conclusions about the actor’s intention to act. This internal aspect of action is not visible and has to be attributed to the actor. The thesis describes and analyses the interviewer’s actions in terms of projects. The result indicates that a number of projects are performed by the interviewer in order to attain the aims of the interviews. Two main aim projects are found – forming an agreed picture of what happened at the crime scene and helping the suspect to go on with his life. The first one refers to institutional demands and the second to personal wishes. These double aims are interlaced in and supported by projects of a lower degree. To conduct the use of the aim projects, the interviewer also perform process projects. Of these projects the project pendulating between the safe and the threatening is central in order to co-ordinate other projects and as a tool for attaining the aims of the interviews. From the results of the study I conclude that professional competence rests on two foundations – the institutional foundation and the personal foundation, where the first consists of institutional goals, regulations and conditions, and the second of the individual interviewer’s mental representations, emotions and values. These foundations form a tacit background to the professional actions performed.