The Building Blocks of Rapport: A Comparison of Strategies in Suspect and Witness Police Interviews with Juvenile

Current police interview strategies are designed with the adult interviewee in mind. Whether dictated by the REID Technique or PEACE method, modern methodology has not been adequately adapted for juvenile interviewees. The reversal decision by the Supreme Court in J.D.B. vs. North Carolina is one instance demonstrating a great need to re-think the way law enforcement approach interviews with juveniles. This case set the precedent that age is an objective factor in police interviews (Feld, 2017), thus showing how police communicative events with adults are distinguishable from those with juveniles and should be adjusted accordingly. Rapport building is a recommended technique as it can improve investigative outcomes, especially considering the public's mounting frustration with the insensitive and coercive police interview tactics currently in use (Vallano & Schrieber Compo, 2015). However, there is a lack of understanding of how such tactics work with juveniles. This exploratory study uses Critical Discourse Analysis to reveal the various linguistic and extra-linguistic strategies that law enforcement can utilize to build rapport with juveniles. Since rapport is a dual system of giving and receiving, interpreting the features of the youth and the law enforcement officer is necessary to understand the fullness in which they are both engaged in developing the rapport with the other. For the purposes of this study, suspect interviews are compared to witness interviews to best understand the differences in obtaining rapport in different interview scenarios. The seven analyzed audio- and video-recorded interviews with juveniles ranging from 3-16 years old were conducted within the last fifteen years in the United States and United Kingdom. Gaining a greater understanding of successful rapport building strategies as well as identifying the relevance and necessity of building rapport with juveniles can aid law enforcement in having more productive interviews with interviewees under the age of eighteen.