The Suspect's Statement: Talk and Text in the Criminal Process: 33 (Studies in Interactional Sociolinguistics, Series Number 33) - Softcover

Komter, Martha

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1107698774 ISBN 13: 9781107698772

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2021

Synopsis

What suspects tell the police may become a crucial piece of evidence when the case comes to court. But what happens to 'the suspect's statement' when it is written down by the police? Based on a unique set of data from over fifteen years' worth of research, Martha Komter examines the trajectory of the suspect's statement from the police interrogation through to the trial. She shows how the suspect's statement is elicited and written down in the police report, how this police report both represents and differs from the original talk in the interrogation, and how it is quoted and referred to in court. The analyses cover interactions in multiple settings, with documents that link one interaction to the next, providing insights into the interactional and documentary foundations of the criminal process and, more generally, into the construction, character and uses of documents in institutional settings.

About this title

About the Author

Martha Komter is research fellow at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), Amsterdam. Her research interests include interaction in institutional settings, such as job interviews, courtroom interaction and police interrogations. She has published widely on these themes, and is author of Conflict and Cooperation in Job Interviews: A Study of Talk, Tasks, and Ideas (1991) and Dilemma's in the Courtroom: A Study of Trials of Violent Crime in the Netherlands (1998).

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1107698774
• ISBN 13: 9781107698772
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 220