Police Interrogations: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) on HackerTube: recommended by 1 Hacker News commenter across 1 month, 2022–2023.
commentary · evergreen
John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on police interrogation tactics and how they can lead innocent people to give false confessions.
Cited in threads on coerced confessions and plea bargains, and praised for well-researched coverage.
“His show does proper research and points to numerous actual cases of harm before making a claim.”
4 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
His show does proper research and points to numerous actual cases of harm before making a claim. Detaining suspects for long periods of time and forcing confessions is a topic that comes up repeatedly, each time with different examples. I don't know how anyone can say with a straight face that this isn't anything of substance. ▶ this video
in “Japanese police make first YouTuber arrest for uploading video game gameplay” · View on HN
Or you know, it being the standard work process for police these days apparently, so they can pat themselves on the back and go home early: ▶ this video
in “People Can Be Convinced They Committed a Crime That Never Happened” · View on HN
Is this news at this point? Last year there was a whole episode of Last Week Tonight with main subject "Police interrogations and false confession" [1] documenting exactly how innocent people are coerced into guilty pleas. [1] ▶ this video
in “The vast majority of criminal cases end in plea bargains, a new report finds” · View on HN
Forced confessions are unfortunately not unique to Japan [1]. Police will behave like that when you reward them based on the number of convictions and don't hold them accountable for screwing over innocent people. Still sucks, though. [1]: ▶ this video
in “Japan passes revised penal code with harsher punishment for cyberbullying” · View on HN