Police to study hypnosis techniques.

Police officers will study hypnosis techniques to help them encourage suspects and witnesses to tell the truth.

"Putting people in a receptive brainwave state makes it likelier that the truth will come out."

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20091217/tuk-p...es-6323e80.html

I would love to hear people's views on this. For example, what is truth (from witness, victim or suspect's perspectives), can hypnosis ever reveal the truth (think alien abductions), is this a political move (eventual compulsory hypnosis of all arrestees and implantation of suggestions), fair and equal treatment in law (not all people can be hypnotised so inequality), etc.

No this is a terrible idea, hypnosis has never proven it can make people tell the truth, it only makes them susceptible to suggestion, which means if a police officer thinks the subject is guilty they can influence the person to believing they actually are guilty without having done anything.

This is very very bad. Hypnosis should never be used for things like this, the mind doesnt work in that way. Its very bad, many good people could be put away for not doing anything just by a police officers suggestions which can lead to actual confessions.

This is manipulation not truth detection. Hypnosis is a field of the mind where anything can be believed, I have no idea where they got the BS to think it makes people tell the truth. Memories are extremely unreliable to recall under hypnotherapy, this shocks me that they are actually doing this.

There is NO SUCH THING as forensic hypnosis, as soon as you put the subject into a hypnotic state all of reality begins to be altered for them, it does not extract the truth it changes reality for a temporary amount of time where the person is highly suggestible. This would allow police officers to essentially mentally torture people, you could convince them they are having their hands burned or that you will shoot them if they dont say what you want and they will believe you.

You can overcome as much pain through hypnosis as you can through morphine, its that powerful. If you can remove the sensation of that much pain and use it as an anesthetic for surgery just imagine what you can do in an interrogation. This violates so many ethical boundaries its ridiculous.

Only in Britain, eh? And this Labour Government still clings on to power!

i had the privilege to watch cops recently where they used shabby techniques in order to coerce suspects into admitting guilt. Whether or not it was true, I could imagine myself in that situation and entirely feeling like I'm guilty before being proven innocent. I'm really against teaching police those techniques as I believe the system is abused enough as it is in las vegas...I don't know how much oversight there is elsewhere.

here's a direct one...if you're under hypnosis, how would you know that the cop isn't just lying to fill his quota? are we going to spend tons of money to go and put cameras on every cop?

Max, as one who has had over 40 years experience in this field, I agree. This challenge poses many questions, including: What ought responsible members of this forum to do about it?

Fortunately, in the 1960's, when I first began to study the nature and function of hypnosis, seriously, I had a wise teacher--The late the Rev. Canon Joseph Wittkofski. His teachings--found in his book: The Pastoral Use of Hypnotic--helped save my daughter's life (1964).

One of the basic principles in his teachings was: As human beings we must never allow ourselves to be slaves of, and manipulated by, others who claim to be our masters.

Do wise parents subjugate their children?
Do they manipulate them, and command them to give obedience?