Use of ‘junk science’ lie detector tests for sex offenders triples in three years

[IwantToRetire]

The number of lie detector tests being used on sex offenders in England and Wales has almost tripled in the last three years, leading to fears that victims’ safety is being put at risk.

The controversial tests are being used on prisoners out on licence, and are taken into account when deciding the level of restrictions put in place or whether someone should be put back behind bars.

But their validity is highly disputed among scientists and evidence produced using them is not admissible in the UK’s criminal courts. One MP condemned them as “junk science”.

Hannah Couchman, senior lawyer at legal charity Rights of Women, called for the government to stop using lie detector tests, warning they “lack an evidential basis and exacerbate discriminatory approaches”.

The barrister told The Independent that the former Conservative government’s rollout of lie detectors was part of their wider “tendency to introduce technological gimmicks as a cure-all to complex social problems”.

Ms Couchman added: “They are baseless and unscientific. Polygraphs are inherently discriminatory because a human has to analyse the data and then decide whether the person is lying or not, and nobody is immune to discriminatory and biased thinking.

“I would be concerned that anxiety could affect the results of that polygraph. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Polygraphs can’t detect lies, they can detect stress. There is nothing human bodies do and don’t do when they are lying.”

She accused the recently departed government of using lie detectors as a “fig leaf to hide accountability over the lack of action on violence against women and girls”.

“We are trying to quantify risk or assign it a numerical value when we know that risk is a subjective and complex concept,” Ms Couchman said.

Quite a long article at https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/polygraphs-sex-offenders-domestic-abuse-b2578032.html

Can also be read at https://archive.ph/8hRAk

That is ridiculous. There's a reason they can't be used in court. They aren't at all reliable. Sociopaths can fool them, because often they don't exhibit physical signs of anxiety.

My local force has trained two people on this pseudo science at a cost of 30k each, They are totally and utterly useless, you get a lot of false positives and there is a reason why they are not used in our court system (thank god) . People just want an easier way of attempting to get to the truth. The problem is that the belief is so widely held that they are accurate and I guess if you ever refused to take one (which I would) your guilt would be inferred.

My PhD supervisor is an expert in false confessions and has long been dismayed that they have been rolled out to assess sex offenders and manage risk.

I heard that they can be gamed by thinking about sex. As well as being a psychopath.

I feel sorry for anyone with chronic anxiety who has to undergo one of these.

What's so depressing is that even if they were brought in because of Tory cost cutting and letting people out on licence, surely the process was properly assessed before being implemented?

I wouldn't want them used at all, but if they are going to use them of all the groups to use them on this is the group that should be at the very very bottom of the list!

What Beetle said.

This is shocking, I thought everyone knew they are crap?