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UoP20Trauma: Managing traumatised witnesses of terror: Developing a therapeutic jurisprudence framework

1. Summary of the impact

The Centre of Forensic Interviewing (CoFI), led by Prof Rebecca Milne, is at the global forefront of research into police interview techniques. Its research on best practice in dealing with traumatised interviewees was drawn on directly in the aftermath of recent terror attacks. CoFI research has demonstrated the vital importance of careful triage of victims and witnesses using appropriate interview techniques, both to avoid further harm, and to extract essential investigative information rapidly and effectively. This research now forms the basis of Witness Interview Strategies for Critical Incidents (WISCI), a framework for policy and practice adopted by UK police nationally, and by international partner organisations. This is a vital contribution to public safety confronted with an increasing threat, and reality, of major terror attacks.

2. Underpinning research

Milne is a leading global expert on the application of psychological theory concerning memory and communication to the practical environment of criminal justice. Her research in forensic psychology draws on multiple disciplines within psychological science, including the cognitive psychology of memory and the social psychology of interpersonal communication.

Under Milne’s leadership, the Centre of Forensic Interviewing (CoFI) functions as a laboratory for doctoral research on these issues. Since its foundation in 2010, it has graduated 15 doctoral researchers, over half of whom were criminal-justice professionals from the UK or elsewhere. Milne is currently Director of Studies for nine researchers and is co-supervisor for a further twelve. These include 16 legal professionals from Australia, Canada, Cyprus, Iceland, Ireland, Singapore and the UK.

Working in the disciplinary tradition of psychology through close collaboration and co-authorship, Milne and CoFI have developed a research-base of over 100 publications concerning how best to access reliable testimony, especially from those most vulnerable (e.g. victims of sexual offences, R1, R2, R3). From this emerged the insight that for the more complex cases (e.g. communicating with those experiencing high levels of trauma) interviewers needed qualitatively different and more sophisticated approaches to the interview process itself (R2 and R3). Critically, this research found that not every police officer had this ability (R3). Ongoing research continues to explore whether a measurable concept such as emotional intelligence can be a key to differentiate the specialist interviewer.

Underpinning the research agendas of CoFI is a partnership with police organisations that spans over 20 years, including Milne’s role as Academic Lead on the National Police Chiefs Council Strategic Investigative Interviewing Steering Committee for over 15 years. As the recognised expert in this area, Milne is regularly called to give practical advice in complex cases (e.g. war crimes). Critically, it is this engagement that highlights dilemmas and issues that laboratory-based research alone cannot predict.

The strand of research that was crucial for this case-study emerged from one such engagement, in the aftermath of the Utøya terror attack in Norway on 22 July 2011. Milne was asked to supervise the research of a Norwegian Police psychologist to examine best practice for dealing with victims of terror attacks. Through interviewing the personnel who had conducted investigative interviews with victims of the 2011 events, this research established the best ways to manage the raw trauma being felt within these interactions. It found that vulnerable interviewees could process aspects of the trauma experienced by describing events on their own terms; to do this, they needed to feel in control of the interview process, and specialised training was needed for police officers to conduct these interviews in this more sensitive way (R4 and 5). In a significant departure from common prior practice, the research highlighted the vital need for interviewers to be “open, flexible and able to adapt to the state and expressions of the interviewee” (R4), to allow the interviewee to control the flow of the communication.

Most prior research in investigative interviewing has stemmed from laboratory-based experimental studies concerning the best ways to access reliable information in controlled settings. Milne’s field research has transformed this evidence-base by addressing previously-disregarded dimensions: the need to manage the trauma of victims and witnesses in their own long-term best interests, and the need for particular uncommon skills amongst interviewers to do this successfully, while extracting valuable evidence and intelligence for the investigative process. Together, these add up to a new model of “therapeutic jurisprudence” for the management of witnesses in critical incidents.

For leading this research, Milne was the sole winner of the 2020 Excellence in Forensic Psychology Research Award from the British Psychological Society.

3. References to the research

(R1) Westera, N., Kebbell, M., & Milne, R. (2016). Want a better criminal justice response to rape? Improve police interviews with complainants and suspects. Violence Against Women, 22(14), 1748-1769. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077801216631439Journal impact factor - 1.797

(R2) O’Mahony, B., Milne, R., & Smith, K. (2018). Investigative interviewing, dissociative identity disorder and the role of the Registered Intermediary. Journal of Forensic Practice, 20(1), 1 , 0-19. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFP-05-2017-0018Awarded the Emerald Literati Award for Outstanding Paper 2019.Journal impact factor - 0.52

(R3) Griffiths, A., Milne, R., and Cherryman, J. (2011). A question of control? The formulation of suspect and witness interview question strategies by advanced interviewers. International Journal of Police Science and Management, 13(3) , 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1350%2Fijps.2011.13.3.219

(R4) Risan, P., Binder, P.E., & Milne, R. (2016). Regulating and coping with distress during police interviews of traumatized victims. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice and Policy, 8(6), 736-744 . https://doi.org/10.1037/tra0000119

Journal impact factor - 2.595

(R5) Risan, P., Binder, P.E., & Milne, R. (2017). Establishing and maintaining rapport in investigative interviews of traumatized victims: A qualitative study. Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, 12(4), 372-387. https://doi.org/10.1093/police/pax031

Journal impact factor - 1.788

(R6) Smith, K., & Milne, R. (2018). Witness interview strategy for critical incidents (WISCI). The Journal of Forensic Practice, 20(4), 268-278. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFP-03-2018-0007

Journal impact factor - 0.52

Evidence of quality of the research

These outputs are a representative selection of a substantial body of related work. All employ robust design, appropriate research methods, and are published in respected peer-reviewed academic journals that are relevant to the discipline.

Research grant funding

(G1) Taylor, P., Knott, K., Iganski, P., Rashid, A., Moore, C., Lloyd, M. S., Ashenden, D., Lawrence, D., Vrij, A., Hope, L., Milne, B., and Joinson, A. CREST: Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats. Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, October 2015-September 2018, (GBP7,568,841).

4. Details of the impact

Police investigators at mass-casualty incidents, and particularly at terror attacks, face extremely complex challenges. It is vital to gather witness information as quickly as possible, while memories are still fresh, and to secure operational intelligence. Investigators must do this in contexts which are often chaotic, against the background of possible follow-up attacks, with inevitably limited resources, and where individual recall can be contaminated by media or other speculation. They must also work with the knowledge that pushing too hard, or in the wrong ways, can further traumatise people who have already suffered, while they try to manage a situation on a daunting scale (cumulatively, for attacks in London between 2005 and 2020, there have been over 10,000 witnesses to interview). This inherently difficult task can be compromised by poor interviewing, or greatly enhanced with sensitive interviewing. Getting it wrong has far-reaching costs to individuals and society. Getting it right is crucial in ensuring a safe and resilient society.

As a national subject matter expert for the UK police, Milne was contacted by British Transport Police (BTP) in the immediate aftermath of the London Bridge terror attack in June 2017. With the incident still ongoing, they sought her advice to create a strategy for managing and interviewing mass witnesses (S1). She helped develop a triaging system on the ground which took a therapeutic jurisprudence approach, prioritising those in most need. Using the two main learning points from her Norway research, that the raw trauma experienced by victims needs to be managed within the interview process by skilful well trained interviewers, and that the victim needs to feel in control of the flow and pace of the process, the triaging system not only took into account the likelihood of the investigative value of the information the witness/victim held but also encompassed the trauma levels of the interviewee (S2).

Due to limited resources and numbers of specialist interviewers, a triaging framework was developed by Milne to ensure that those in most need were matched with those most skilled who were able to manage trauma within the interview process. Thus, those individuals who were likely to hold the most valuable investigative information and those who were deemed most traumatised were triaged as Category A and were interviewed by the most skilful and highly trained specialist interviewers in specialist suites using visual recording equipment; the gold standard.

In addition to constructing the framework for this procedure, Prof Milne also helped to write the interview strategies for category A victims, and personally briefed the specialist interviewers. This reinforced the training she had already given, in her longer-term association with the police. 120 witnesses in the London Bridge attack were managed using Milne’s system, with such positive results that this system became BTP policy in 2018 (S6) and has been used in subsequent incidents, e.g. the Victoria Station terror incident 31st Dec. 2018 (S1, S3, S4, S5, S6). As one witness voiced: “I was able to express myself much easier than if I was trying to get my words down on paper. The two detectives who interviewed me really put me at ease and it made the whole process so much calmer than the initial rushed approach before your team stepped in. The interview helped me process this incident so much. It should without doubt be rolled out more across the force, because the help and support I received after the incident because of this was invaluable” (S4).

Following on from this successful urgent intervention, Milne undertook a review of witness triaging systems used across a range of agencies involved in investigating terror attacks in 2015-2017. In her capacity as Academic Lead of the National Police Chiefs Council Investigative Interview Strategic Steering Committee, Milne and the Police Vulnerable Lead Dr Kevin Smith brought together key operational officers at the end of June 2017 to catalyse inter-force learning and improve provision for the vulnerable in the aftermath of these attacks. Building on this work, Milne and Smith subsequently created an operational therapeutic jurisprudence framework for triaging and interviewing, called Witness Interview Strategies for Critical Incidents (WISCI) (R6, S3, S7).

WISCI equips interviewers to triage witnesses whilst taking into account the trauma they have endured and was launched at a national conference that Milne chaired (February 2018). This was attended by over three-quarters of all UK police forces, and representatives of the National Crime Academy, College of Policing, the intelligence services, London Ambulance Service, the Garda Siochana, and Norway Police (S3). WISCI guidance has since been embedded into policy, operational and organisational practice, and training since 2018 (by BTP, City of London Police, the Metropolitan Police, SO15 Counter Terrorism Command, the UK National Counter-Terrorism Network, 10 UK Police forces- those in and around London where attacks are most likely to occur, and the National Crime Academy) (S3, S6, S7, S8).

WISCI has thus been implemented in response to subsequent terror attacks in the UK: by BTP after the Manchester Victoria train station attack (January 1 2019, S3, S4, S6), by City of London Police in response to the Fishmongers terror attack (November 2019, S8); and by SO15 at the Streatham attack (February 2020, S8). In all of these incidents, Milne was again personally engaged, triaging witnesses and advising on best interview strategies. Detective Chief Superintendent Rebecca Rigg, one of SO15’s operational commanders, said: “Professor Becky Milne specialises in achieving best evidence from victims/witnesses of trauma. She has been amazing at helping us build strategies involving mass fatalities and is globally renowned for her work. She is a fantastic ally for the advancement of interviewing within counter-terrorism and we have been working closely with her following the 2017 terror attacks” (S8).

Milne’s ongoing collaboration with the National Vulnerable Lead and UK Police ensures that best-practice interviewing continues to be provided to vulnerable people who have been traumatised by witnessing terror attacks (S3, S7, S8). She was a keynote, talking about the new framework at a Police Responder Bravery Awards Ceremony in Edinburgh, (March 2019, S5), with the two other keynotes being the Cabinet Secretary for Justice of Scotland and the Chief Constable of BTP. The framework was also mentioned in a research briefing to parliament (S10), and has been part of the development of the HM Government “Victims of Terrorism Unit” (S7). Her research (R3, R4) was also integral to the National Police Guidance on how to remotely interview within the Covid 19 pandemic (S9), again ensuring that potential trauma experienced by victims is being taken into account in national policy even in these unprecedented circumstances.

5. Sources to corroborate the impact

(S1) BTP Operation Lyman Interview Strategy- London Bridge attack (2017).

(S2) Dr Patrick Risan, Norwegian Police, testimonial letter

(S3) DI Ian Trantum, British Transport Police, testimonial letter November 2020

(S4) Quote from BTP police officer involved in Victoria Station, Manchester, New Year terror incident 29/03/2019

(S5) Federation Representative Letter commending how the framework ensures the health and well-being of staff.

(S6) 2018 British Transport Police Policy Document.

(S7) Dr Kevin Smith, National Police Vulnerable Lead testimonial Letter 14/11/2020

(S8) Supporting statements from Supt. Rebecca Riggs and DCI Dan Brown, Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command 2020

(S9) UK Police - National Remote Interviewing policy document (2020)

(S10) Parliament Briefing (2019) https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/POST-PN-0607#fullreport

Additional contextual information

Grant funding

Grant number Value of grant
ES/N009614/1 £7,568,841