Interviewing witnesses and suspects
No interview with a witness or suspect takes place until the investigator has sufficient intelligence or information. Witness interviews are part of the process of collecting further information, having material explained, and/or confirming or validating information. Witnesses should also be assessed for credibility and value. Suspects may be, depending on the legal context, interviewed for facts or for formal statements related to possible offenses. Often, suspects are interviewed in a specific order in case the legal system allows plea-bargaining or other means of turning lesser suspects into witnesses. Most countries now use variations of structured interview techniques or conversation management, depending on the purpose of the interview, and most require contemporaneous note-taking or tape-recording as a formal (and admissible) record.
