How false confessions happen

Shawn King: We talked a little bit about the false confessions. 25% of convictions are from false confessions, how does that happen?

Peter Neufeld: Well, what you learn is that some people are just more vulnerable. People who are younger. A lot of our false confession cases involve teenage males. Some of them are people who are mentally challenged in one way or another. Some of them have other psychological issues. But some people are just more compliant, they want to go along with things, and it’s very easy with the kinds of pressure that comes from the police where they say, ‘just tell us what we want and you’ll go home.’ After five hours of that kind of screaming, people think they’ll really go home.