What the PEACE model is
The PEACE framework was introduced into England and Wales in 1992 following a series of wrongful convictions in which false confessions, obtained through oppressive or manipulative interviewing, played a central role. The model is now the required standard for all investigative interviews conducted by police in England and Wales, and its principles are embedded in the relevant ACPO guidance and College of Policing guidance on investigative interviewing.
The five stages of the model establish a structure designed to maximise the reliability of information obtained while minimising the risk of suggestibility, contamination of the interviewee’s account, or the production of false admissions. Planning requires the interviewer to prepare an account of the known facts and formulate an interview strategy before the interview begins. Engage and Explain requires the interviewer to establish rapport and to explain clearly the purpose of the interview and the interviewee’s rights. Account requires the interviewer to elicit a free narrative account from the interviewee before asking specific questions, and to use open-ended questions that do not suggest the expected answer. Closure requires the interviewer to summarise the account, allow the interviewee to correct or add to it, and conclude the interview in a structured way. Evaluate requires a post-interview assessment of the information obtained and its reliability.
Why it matters for interview reliability
The PEACE model reflects the psychological research on memory, suggestibility and false confession. An interview that departs from the model — by using leading questions, by presenting the investigator’s theory before the interviewee has given a free account, or by applying pressure that induces acquiescence — produces interview material of reduced reliability. In some cases, departure from PEACE standards has produced false confessions or false admissions that were subsequently retracted or challenged.
The significance of interview methodology in wrongful-conviction cases has been recognised in a series of Court of Appeal judgments and in academic literature on miscarriage of justice. Where interview material is used as evidence of consciousness of guilt, or where aspects of an interview are characterised as admissions, the reliability of the interview process is directly relevant to the weight the jury should attach to that material.
Departures identified in the Letby interview record
Independent review of the Letby police interview transcripts has identified a number of features that supporters of a CCRC referral characterise as departures from PEACE model standards. These include the use of questions that incorporated the interviewer’s account of events before the interviewee had given a complete free narrative, and questioning that returned repeatedly to topics in ways that may have increased suggestibility rather than eliciting genuine recall.
The so-called “confessions” in the Letby case — in particular the Post-it note and certain other written and oral statements — have been subjected to detailed independent analysis. Supporters of a referral contend that those statements are more consistent with the expressions of distress by a person under sustained institutional pressure than with genuine admissions of guilt, and that the interview methodology contributed to a context in which ambiguous statements were elicited and then characterised by the prosecution in the most adverse light possible.
It is not the position of this analysis that departures from PEACE standards are established as a matter of agreed fact. The transcripts are the primary record and independent forensic review of them is ongoing. What is established is that the question of interview methodology is a live issue in the referral process.
Comparable wrongful-conviction interview problems
The relationship between non-compliant interviewing and wrongful conviction is illustrated by several comparable cases. Stefan Kiszko was convicted in 1975 of the murder of Lesley Molseed on the basis of a confession obtained in circumstances subsequently found to involve oppression; he was acquitted in 1992 after serving sixteen years. Stephen Downing was convicted of murder in 1973 following a confession obtained while Downing, who had learning difficulties, was unrepresented and subjected to a prolonged interview; he was acquitted by the Court of Appeal in 2002.
The Tom Hayes case, decided by the Supreme Court in 2025, addressed the reliability of interview material obtained in circumstances where the interviewee was not told that he was under caution and where the questioning took on a character more consistent with inducing admissions than with eliciting a free account. The Supreme Court’s analysis of interview reliability in that context is relevant to the broader methodological question raised in the Letby case.
Sally Clark’s case, while primarily an expert-evidence miscarriage, also involved questions about how the police and prosecution approached ambiguous statements made by a person under severe psychological stress in the period immediately after the deaths of her children. The characterisation of distressed statements as admissions or as evidence of consciousness of guilt is a recurring feature of healthcare-worker wrongful-conviction cases.
Implications for the conviction-safety question
Interview methodology is not the primary ground on which supporters of a referral base the conviction-safety argument. The primary grounds relate to the medical and statistical evidence. However, interview methodology is a secondary and supporting ground, because the prosecution relied on aspects of the interview record — including the Post-it note — as evidence of consciousness of guilt. If the interview process that produced or contextualised that material did not comply with PEACE model requirements, the reliability of those inferences is reduced.
A CCRC referral application is expected to address interview methodology as one of several grounds, with independent forensic linguistic and interview-science expert evidence in support. The question for the Court of Appeal, if a referral is made, will be whether the interview material was properly put before the jury with adequate directions on its reliability, and whether a jury properly directed on the PEACE model departures might have reached a different verdict.