Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Imagine a justice system built on rigorous evidence, not gut instincts or educated guesses about what works and what doesn't.
More people could access the civil justice they deserve.
The criminal justice system could be smaller, more effective, and more humane.
The Access to Justice Lab here at Harvard Law School is producing that needed evidence. And this podcast is about the challenge of transforming law into an evidence based field.
I'm your host, Jim Griner, and this is Proof Over Precedent.
This week we're bringing you a student voice.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Hello, my name is Spencer and I am currently a 1L at Harvard Law School. I am here in Professor Griner's Access to Justice Lab with my classmate Kristin.
[00:00:48] Speaker C: Hi, everyone.
I'm Kristen.
I am Spencer's classmate. Guilty.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: Awesome. So before we get into the specific research that I went into, I just have a question for you, Kristin. Last semester when we had some take home finals, which I'm sure you look back on very fondly, I loved not
[00:01:07] Speaker C: being able to go to the bathroom for eight hours.
[00:01:10] Speaker B: Did you choose what location you would be taking those take home finals in, like, consciously?
[00:01:17] Speaker C: Yeah, I think that I always knew that I was gonna take them in my room.
[00:01:22] Speaker B: And was there any sort of specific reason for that? Does your room have a printer nearby? Access to your kitchen? What was it about your room that made it seem appealing to take those finals in?
[00:01:32] Speaker C: I think that what I liked most about my room is that it was a space that I could control.
So if the chair was getting uncomfortable, I could add a pillow underneath it. Or if the lighting was not to my liking, I could change the lights and turn on my little fairy lights, turn off the lights. The space was completely in my control. And so over the course of eight hours, adjusting everything up to make my comfort level there.
[00:01:57] Speaker B: And what would you imagine would be the worst place to take an eight hour super procedure exam like the hospital?
[00:02:07] Speaker C: I actually. I've heard some horror stories about taking finals in the ER and the sterile lighting and the hard chairs, that would be my nightmare.
[00:02:16] Speaker B: I think we're all generally aware of the way that space affects how we feel and how we move through the warriors.
A reason that a lot of religious buildings have really tall ceilings and that courtrooms will have a lot of natural wood. Just our physical environments do affect how we feel and can also affect how we recall information.
But surprisingly little innovation has gone into the way that interrogation rooms are designed. Pretty much as long as they've existed. They look like how they look in the movies. It's a pretty drab room, usually with two hard chairs, a Small table, no natural lighting, almost exclusively fluorescent lighting. And occasionally there will be a mirror on the side. But beyond that, there's really nothing else to the rooms.
[00:02:58] Speaker C: Yeah. Why does that matter, though? Don't. I guess. Don't police departments do that for a purpose?
[00:03:07] Speaker B: They do it for a purpose. To start with, like your first question, why does it matter? I'm not sure that it does, but I'm just curious about. There's been literally no innovation. Maybe there is something that matters. Maybe there is a better room design that could get more accurate information out. But. But as far as the actual why do police do it? Why are these rooms designed the way that they are? Originally, the justification was to enhance privacy. I think that kind of makes sense. You don't want a room that a bunch of people can hear what's happening when you're trying to get sensitive information out and to limit distractions as well, which also I think intuitively makes a lot of sense. But there's a lot of rooms that could achieve both of those goals without being so drab and simply just tear off one of the. And I was just curious about maybe if there's another way to design a room that is also private and doesn't cause distractions, but could be maybe less stress inducing and might be less likely to lead to false confessions. Because although there have been very little studies drawn to compare and contrast different room designs and how that relates to false confessions, there is a lot of research that shows that environments can create stress, that stress can lead to faulty memory recall, or it can lead to people simply lying under stress and obviously faulty memory recall or lying under stress, either one of those can lead to confessions.
[00:04:26] Speaker C: Is there any data on that talks about how false confession and false recalls lead to incarceration?
[00:04:33] Speaker B: There is. There's been a lot of work done into how her DNA evidence can exonerate people. And I'm sure that you've heard about some of this as well in. In the criminal legal system as well, and specifically at Cardozo School of Law, they have an innocence project that's been looking into the content that led to these false incarcerations. 29% of people who have been exonerated based on DNA evidence essentially showing that they were innocent. 29% of those people had falsely confessed to the crimes that they were incarcerated for, even though they were fully innocent. Now, how much of that can we tie back to room design?
Who knows? Obviously we don't have the data for that, but I think it is safe to say that some amount of stressful factors led to such a high percentage of people, again, falsely claiming to be a part of crimes that they were never part of.
[00:05:21] Speaker C: Yeah, and I think that's also something important to note about that is when you're dealing with something that has so many compounding factors, looking for even the most minor solutions or just any way to reduce that from happening, I think is a noble idea. I am curious, just broadly, how does an environment create stress?
[00:05:43] Speaker B: There are a lot of different things. One of the most common ones that's studied is noise. Even the CIA has admitted that they've used noise as a form of torture in Guantanamo Bay, specifically by playing the same song over and over. But even not looking at the evidence itself, I think we all can attest to a time when a screaming child of some noise has increased our stress.
There's also been a decent amount of research into lightings, specifically fluorescent lighting. One study showed that it increases fear, specifically in patients who are predisposed to have anxiety. And people who interact with the criminal legal system are more likely to have anxiety than the average population. So that's certainly something to take into account here.
Temperature as well as one whether too hot or too cold, that can increase stress. Again, I think that would be intuitive.
I found multiple different criminal defendant attorney websites across different states advising their clients to bring coats into the room when they're getting interrogated.
Because a lot of their clients in the past have complained about being in extremely cold rooms. And even if that's just anecdotal evidence, the fact that it showed up so often from so many different attorneys, I found that interesting and potentially concerning.
But another thing is color. There's been a lot of studies on color in children and how colors can cause a range of emotions. This is things like red making people feel more angry, more stressed, blue making people feel sad. A bit unclear if that's a social thing or the environmental thing itself. And then finally, I found a really interesting study that found that curved rooms have much more calming effects than rectangular rooms. So maybe that's something to consider when buying your next home. Although I don't think that's something that's going to happen soon for either one of us.
[00:07:27] Speaker C: Yeah, I was wondering why I was feeling so stressed in this rectangular room.
I did just want to say something about the temperature. Goes to show how many hidden benefits of having a lawyer there are. The fact that just the attorney has been there a number of times and has clients who've experienced that so they can share that information with their client and Kind of act as a mitigating factor of false confession rates at that stage of the process, I think is really important and makes me excited to be an attorney in the future.
Can you tell me about any studies that have explored how interrogation room designs might create stress?
[00:08:05] Speaker B: Yeah. So throughout my research, I found two specific sets of studies that stood out to me. The first set of studies was conducted in 2017 by a professor named Evan Dawson.
And he was basically looking at how the, quote, openness of interrogation rooms might impact disclosure.
So with his first study, he assembled 112 voluntary participants and had them act as though they were part of this plot and then asked questions. So essentially, they were each given a flash drive, which they gave to an actor who was pretending to be an environmental activist engaged in a plot to bomb a natural gas site.
A very interesting situation that they put them in. But then they were subsequently questioned about that interaction in one of two interrogation rooms. Now, that first room was what they called a custodial setting, basically mimicking a traditional police interrogation room there. Fluorescently lit, two hard chairs, pretty small room. And then that second room was called a, quote, open setting. It looked similar just in terms of materials of the room, but it was a significantly larger room, almost twice the size. It had a window, notably, and more comfortable office chairs and a larger table.
They also placed a table to the side with things that they called open primers on it, which were paintings of nature, a water pitcher with cups, and an open book, which they thought might make people feel more open by looking at things that sort of evoke openness.
And Dawson was able to find that people did actually disclose more information and more forthcoming in their disclosure in that open room. So they didn't even need to be asked as much. They were just volunteering information. And also of the information that they volunteered, more of it was what he termed as relevant information.
And then he replicated this study again, this time testing both rooms with and without those open primers, as in that book that water the paintings, and found that the open primers had no effect, but that the room itself actually still did have an effect across both rounds, with the more open room, the larger room with the window, and all that increasing disclosure rates.
And then a similar study was conducted in 2019 that actually found no differences. Notably.
[00:10:16] Speaker C: Was it like the same study design?
[00:10:19] Speaker B: It was a similar study design. I didn't notice any references to the 2017 Dawson study in it, but there were some factors around the study design that might have influenced the fact that it saw no differences. In disclosure rates. So the second study in 2019, it also just involved two different rooms, one being larger than the other. And there were participants who were questioned about the mock experience to see if there was any difference in how they were disclosing things across the rooms.
Notable about this study, though, was that it involved exclusively university students as participants. The average age was 21.2, whereas the first studies set of studies I talked about, they involved a greater diversity across gender, race and age. They were very cognizant of recruiting people that had different characteristics in those respects. Again, not fully representative of the population of people that would be interacting with the criminal legal system, but at least there's a bit more variety there.
Also, in this 2019 study, almost all of the participants were female, 82%. And they were being questioned by all female research assistants who were close in age to the participants and were also aware of the study's objectives, as opposed to, in the Dawson studies, aware. An experienced counterintelligence agent who was blind to the purpose of the study was interviewing the participants and being around someone who's close to your age, who's your same gender. That just might be a more comfortable environment and easier conversation to have, which might have mitigated any potential stressful factors of the womb. Again, I'm not saying that this was an issue. Perhaps they were correct, but that's just something to be aware of and maybe shows that more research should be done in the future.
[00:12:02] Speaker C: Were they being interrogated about a crime in the second study?
[00:12:06] Speaker B: They were, yes. But again, I mean, the person who was conducting the interrogation, it was a young female research assistant, and it was who was asking the questions of another young female. And I think there is something to be said for having this conversation. Me and you were of similar demographics, on those respects at least. And it's a more comfortable conversation to have as opposed to if someone walked into this room and was someone with 30 years of experience as an intelligence agent who was confronting you about something, you might feel a bit more intimidated, or at least I know that I would. So I think that's one potential fault with the study design of the 2019 one.
[00:12:41] Speaker C: Totally. And as we know, most of the people that interact with the criminal legal system are men, as we've learned from our criminal law class.
So I find it really interesting that they chose to recruit over 80% women, unless there's been a spike in women committing crime as of recently.
[00:12:59] Speaker B: No, I think for that one, it was more just who was there because it was connected at a college but yeah, again, young women who are college educated don't make up the majority of people in the criminal legal system.
[00:13:10] Speaker C: Totally. But is there any room for future research?
[00:13:14] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I think the fact that we see conflicting results between these different sets of studies indicates that there should be future research and that there isn't a clear answer on whether and to what extent rooms can increase stress and because of that increase potentially false conviction rates. I think it would be pretty easy to replicate Dawson study or to replicate that 2019 study in the real world. Police stations that I was able to find on their websites, any sort of layout of their station, they almost all have conference rooms. And it could be pretty easy for a station to randomize which suspects are interrogated in their typical interrogation room versus in a conference room to see if over time that changed the content of information that was provided, if it changed the amount of information that was provided, or if even people just spoke to feeling more comfortable in those settings.
I also think in situations where video evidence is available, they could in those different rooms, ask suspects, do you remember what color the car was? If they know that the car was already blue and just see how I know. It's not always possible to test the accuracy of the information that someone telling you in those situations, but where there is video evidence, that might be a place where you could.
So those are some potential ways that you could replicate those studies in the real world.
[00:14:33] Speaker C: Yeah. And I know that when I was getting my degree in criminology, a lot of my professors worked directly with police stations for their research.
So I think that there is a willingness there that you could utilize to really go in, study the interrogation rooms and maybe replicate them. Because I'm not sure if there's any kind of issues with bringing people to a police station. I'm sure that there, there are some issues with that, but definitely a lot of opportunities to explore there.
[00:15:03] Speaker B: Oh, I was generally thinking not so much with participants, but with actual suspects just putting them in the conference room as opposed to the interrogation room, that kind of thing.
[00:15:11] Speaker C: Oh, you could do like a randomized control.
[00:15:13] Speaker B: Exactly. Trial ct. Yeah.
[00:15:15] Speaker C: Uh huh. I knew it.
Yeah, I think that'd be really cool. But what are some pitfalls of that?
[00:15:22] Speaker B: I think some of them are again, a bit obvious. It is first of all hard to isolate for just one environmental factor. So if we are just putting some of the suspects in the conference room as opposed to the classic interrogation room, how are we supposed to know if we do see an increased disclosure rate? If that's because of the lighting, if it's because the chairs are more comfortable, if it's because it's a bigger room, if it's maybe just because they happen to get people who are in nicer moods asking them questions, it's really hard to tell exactly what factor is accounting for any sort of change, if there was a change. So that would be one significant harder to overcome.
Also, it would be hard to measure without lots of data, just especially because we couldn't have every single person who's being interviewed being interviewed about the same topic. It's their own specific situation that they're there to be interrogated about. So you would really need a lot of data to confidently say that there was any sort of correlation and that it wasn't just that the people who were in X room happened to be more willing to disclose than people who were in Y room.
And also some measures could be expensive to implement if they figure out that natural lighting, for example, is a huge thing that makes people feel more comfortable, that makes them disclose more. It's very expensive to put a window into every single police station. And obviously city budgets are not huge and this probably isn't the top priority. Those are some potential pitfalls with either the ability to do this research or if this research did yield the result, the ability to actually implement those results effectively.
[00:16:55] Speaker C: Yeah, totally. I do see though that there could be cheaper ways to do it. For example, just changing the light bulb is pretty cheap.
[00:17:03] Speaker B: Yeah, that's true.
[00:17:04] Speaker C: Putting a pillow on a chair. Yeah, yeah. I think that there, there's a lot that you could do here. Do you think that it's still worth pursuing?
[00:17:12] Speaker B: Absolutely, yeah. I think at least just doing the research would be. It wouldn't really cost much of anything. Whether it is just putting them into a different room or changing the light bulb, changing out a pillow, changing the room itself in a small way. It doesn't really cost much. And if it does create more just outcomes, that's certainly a good result. Regardless of your feelings on the criminal legal system. I don't think we want any. And people in jail. And even if there isn't a strong correlation between whether or not a room is more or less anxiety inducing and the rate of disclosure that we see, there's also just the basic fact of human dignity. These rooms are very bleak looking and people can be kept in them for over 24 hours, sometimes over 48 hours. This is almost always after a stressful event has occurred in someone's life. It's a tough place to be. And if we can make the process just a little bit less degrading, even if that just does mean changing out a light bulb. I think that's again, something worth pursuing as well.
[00:18:09] Speaker C: Yeah, I think so too. I think that there's a lot of problems with the criminal legal system and I really appreciate you taking the time to talk about this with me because it's really, it's new, it's exciting. And I agree. I think that in a process that's so wholly undignified, just making minor steps even can go a long way and in a person's life and humanizing them. So I did just want to thank
[00:18:32] Speaker B: you, Spencer, for this and thank you so much for taking my time to speak to me about it. Yeah, and thank you all for listening too.
[00:18:39] Speaker C: Thank you everyone.
[00:18:40] Speaker A: Proof Over Precedent is a production of the Access to Justice Lab at Harvard Law School.
Views expressed in student podcasts are not necessarily those of the A J Lab.
Thanks for listening. If we piqued your interest, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Even better, leave us a rating or share an episode with a friend or on social media media.
Here's a sneak preview of what we'll bring you next week.
[00:19:06] Speaker D: I've seen many news articles over the last year about lawyers using AI, judges using AI, and also pro se litigants using AI instead of using a lawyer. And by the way, to clarify what I mean by AI, I'm using that as a shorthand for general purpose large language models or LLMs like ChatGPT or Claude. And the idea of pro se litigants using AI was interesting to me for a couple of reasons. So one, it could completely change the game for pro se litigation.
Ten years ago these litigants were using Google court websites, maybe asking courthouse staff and friends and family to try to cobble together their court filings. But it could be really difficult to piece together all of the information they needed.
So 10 years ago in 2016, there was a study called Cases Without Counsel that looked at self representation in the US and some of the participants said that they had found Google very helpful. But then others said things like court websites were, quote, hard to navigate or that when they went in person to ask court staff they were any question that they asked, they said, quote, we're not giving legal advice. Well now these litigants can turn to AI and they are.
A 2025 NBC article interviewed a litigant who used ChatGPT to appeal an eviction and won. And she said, quote, I can't overemphasize the usefulness of AI in my case. I never, ever could have won this appeal without a.
