Confessing to a crime you didn't commit
All In The Mind
ABC Australia
4.5 • 825 Ratings
🗓️ 15 May 2026
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Imagine police are interrogating you over a crime you didn't commit.
If you're innocent, you're safe, right? Wrong.
Sometimes, being innocent can make you more likely to confess. How is that possible?
In part two of our four-part series, Forensic, we learn about the police interviewing techniques that make false confessions more likely, and the bizarre cases in which people come to believe they really, truly did commit a crime – despite being innocent.
Guests:
Saul KassinDistinguished Professor Emeritus at John Jay College of Criminal Justice Professor Emeritus at Williams College
Lisanne Adam Lecturer in Law, RMIT University School of Law
Celine van GoldeAssociate Professor in Legal Psychology, University of Sydney
Credits:
- Presenter/producer: Sana Qadar
- Senior producer: James Bullen
- Producer: Rose Kerr
- Sound engineer: Roi Huberman
You can catch up on more episodes of the All in the Mind podcast with journalist and presenter Sana Qadar, exploring the psychology of topics like stress, memory, communication and relationships on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | ABC Listen, Podcasts, Radio, News, Music and More. |
| 0:07.9 | Why do humans hold on to stuff? |
| 0:11.0 | Oddments we don't use, and yet can't quite throw out. |
| 0:14.6 | It's not just you and me. |
| 0:16.0 | Australia's oldest library is crammed with stuff that isn't books. |
| 0:20.7 | Terrible paintings, old menus, human hair. |
| 0:24.1 | Is this history or hoarding? |
| 0:26.3 | I'm Annabelle Crabb. |
| 0:27.3 | Come and have a rummage through the story of us told by our stuff. |
| 0:31.6 | Search for the History or Hording podcast on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:39.6 | In the late 1970s, Saul Casson was a graduate psychology student at the University of Kansas, |
| 0:46.3 | and he got involved in research looking at jury trials and confession evidence. |
| 0:51.9 | I'm looking through the law school book in evidence, and there's a chapter on confession |
| 0:56.4 | evidence and a footnote to that chapter. |
| 0:59.3 | And the footnote was to the leading manual of interrogations and how it is that police |
| 1:04.2 | interrogate suspects to get confessions. |
| 1:07.1 | Sol was intrigued. |
| 1:09.0 | So he took the book out of the library, and then he read it cover to cover. |
| 1:14.0 | And I was horrified. |
| 1:16.1 | I was horrified. |
| 1:17.8 | The social psychologist did me who studies social influence, who studies compliance and obedience to authority. |
| 1:25.2 | I looked at those tactics that police are trained to use to get confessions, and my first |
... |
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