False confessions are more common than many people are aware of and can have disastrous consequences.

Legal professionals also underestimate the risks of people confessing to crimes they did not commit.

Defense attorneys perceptions are more accurate than prosecutors and judges, but still lag behind reality.

Research highlights several ways to address the problem.

Popular belief tends to hold that if a person confesses to a crime then most likely they are guilty of that crime. Belief and fact are two very different things though. In reality, false confessions are much more common than people typically think and can have drastic consequences.

This false belief that false confessions are rare is bad enough when it is held by the general public. It’s even more problematic when people involved in the justice system hold this view. For example, research shows that juries and potential jurors also commonly share misconceptions about false confessions (Mindthoff et al., 2018). Worse still, a recent study shows that similarly inaccurate beliefs are held by the people we would expect to be most knowledgeable of the problem: legal professionals themselves.

The study was conducted by Teresa Schneider and colleagues and published in the journal, Psychology, Public Policy, and Law (Schneider et al., 2025). The authors surveyed a sample of German legal professionals, including criminal judges, public prosecutors, and defense attorneys. They asked them questions designed to appraise their knowledge, perspectives, and experiences about false confessions and compared them to what we know about the topic from empirical research. The results were troubling, revealing key weaknesses in the justice system.

False Confessions: The Basics

To appreciate the study’s findings, it’s important to contextualize them by emphasizing the importance of false confessions and how they work. To start, there are many reasons why people might admit to a crime they didn’t actually commit (Leo, 2009). These include both dispositional and situational causes. ‘Dispositional causes’ are characteristics or conditions that make a person more prone to making a false confession. For instance, they could be delusional, feel guilty about something else, not fully understand the situation, or possibly be trying to protect someone like a family member.

Situational factors can play a role too. Many of these have to do with police interrogation procedures rather than the suspect themselves. During interrogation, law enforcement may use pressure, threats, deception, and sleep deprivation on suspects. They might confess to crimes they didn’t commit because of these, because they have been led to misunderstand what’s really going on, or because they just want the severe treatment to end.

Regardless of cause, false confessions have important consequences for both the individuals wrongly accused of a crime, the criminal justice system more broadly, and society at large. For the individual, these include the harms of the conviction itself: harm to reputation, emotional trauma, loss of freedom in the case of incarceration or other penalt

ies, and likely strains in their social life. False confessions also cast doubt on the fairness and effectiveness of the criminal justice system. They raise doubts about legal procedures, investigations, and interrogations, undermining institutional trust. At the societal level, false confessions can be expensive. For instance, they can lead to retrials, appeals, and eventual compensation for the wrongfully accused. They also disproportionately affect at-risk populations—such as youth and adults with intellectual disabilities—adding to existing social disparities. Meanwhile, the real guilty party goes unpunished and free to do more harm.

These facts about false confessions, and many more like them, are well known by researchers, but are legal professionals aware of them?

The study revealed that, overall, the legal professionals in the sample displayed important deficits and inaccuracies in their understanding of false confessions brought about through police interrogation pressure. Defense attorneys showed greater awareness of the dangers involved than either criminal judges or public prosecutors. The latter two groups did not differ significantly from each other on most measures. However, even the attorneys tended to underestimate the risks of false confessions and underestimate protective measures. Some examples of these findings demonstrate the overall pattern and the problems it indicates.

First, only 75% of the sample believed false confessions can happen under police pressure. Comparing professionals though, the defense attorneys did the best, with 99% agreeing it could happen. Only 65% of criminal judges thought so and just 53% of public prosecutors. The attorneys also led in believing that 11% of all innocent suspects interrogated by the police falsely confessed, compared to only 4% of both criminal judges and public prosecutors.

When it came to how many false confessions they had personally witnessed, the attorneys on average reported that they thought they had seen six on average. The criminal judges on average reported an average of only two and the prosecutors just one. Besides their own perceived experiences, the attorneys also reported hearing about false confession cases from other people the most at 10 times on average. By comparison, the prosecutors and judges both heard only about four false confessions.

When it came to risk factors associated with false confessions, similar patterns emerged. A significant number of respondents showed a lack of awareness of how situational issues could increase the likelihood of their occurrence. More than a quarter of the overall sample did not think that police strategies increased the risk, including practices like confrontational questioning, leading questions, or emotional manipulation. The professionals performed somewhat better when it came to assessing the importance of dispositional factors, especially mental illness. However, 15% still not think factors like sleep deprivation, low intelligence, or drug withdrawal increased risk of confession. Across both sets of factors, defense attorneys continued to show greater awareness than both judges and prosecutors.

Improving the Process

False confessions are a significant problem, but they are also an often overlooked or underestimated one. As this study indicates, even legal professionals seem to take them too lightly. Hopefully, work like this will help to draw more attention to this crucial issue. It may also help to address it. The study suggests some steps that can be taken right now.

First, the results revealed the misunderstandings about false confessions that are prevalent among legal professionals. This highlights the need for additional education in the field, including during law school, but also in subsequent training throughout their careers. This will help professionals maintain up-to-date currency with what ongoing research reveals.

Training should also include science-supported, best practices when it comes to interview techniques. This way, professionals like prosecutors can be more confident in the information they collect themselves and all professionals can better assess information collected through a variety of police interview techniques.

Professional testimony should also be considered more often. Psychological professionals can be consulted to evaluate how reliable a confession is, based on the well-known risk factors of false confessions such as those considered above.

Finally, simply recording suspect interrogations –consistently and thoroughly—can make a big difference. Allowing the court access into exactly what happened can produce more confidence in the value of confessions or better cause to doubt suspicious ones.

Leo, R. A. (2009). False confessions: Causes, consequences and implications. The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.

Mindthoff, A., Evans, J. R., Perez, G., Woestehoff, S. A., Olaguez, A. P., Klemfuss, J. Z., ... & Woody, W. D. (2018). A survey of potential jurors’ perceptions of interrogations and confessions. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 24(4), 430.

Schneider, T., Hunscher, M., Geven, L., Schell-Leugers, J., & May, L. (2025). What do legal professionals know about false confessions? A survey with defense attorneys, public prosecutors, and criminal judges. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 31(4), 348–358

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