Forensic Decision-Making: Lazy Decisions Are Often Flawed

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Police and other professionals working in forensic settings (e.g., security agents, parole board members, benefit fraud) and laypersons involved in criminal justice (e.g., jurors) must make numerous, often complex, decisions, many of which will have life-changing ramifications. Although the complexity of decision-making in forensic contexts is widely recognised, decisions must be made, typically in time-critical situations, often without all the information available at the time. Police and others cannot decide not to decide, and they are unable to go home and think about what to do for a few days. There is no cooling-off period.

For example, one may need to decide whether to arrest a person of interest quickly to avoid further offending or wait until more evidence is available to avoid arresting the wrong person. Or one may be faced with choosing whether to believe an account given by a person of interest and release him/her into the community or to disbelieve what is said and charge that person with the offence. Or perhaps one must decide which lines of enquiry to prioritise after a murder when time and resources are limited.

Laypersons on juries must decide whether an accused person is guilty or innocent. In doing so, they are asked to weigh the evidence presented to decide who to believe. In the case of Ghislaine Maxwell, for example, jurors had to consider the testimony of numerous victims and survivors of sex trafficking alongside the furious arguments and denials presented by Maxwell’s defence team and her family. The jury found her guilty, but how did they decide?

Consequences of "Bad" Decisions or Decision Avoidance

Decision-making in forensic and other professional contexts such as the military and fire and rescue services has long been an area of interest for psychologists because the consequences of "bad" decisions or decision avoidance are usually serious, life-changing, and can result in loss of life. Following are three examples of this from the United Kingdom:

1. In the Hillsborough football disaster, 96 people died because police officers in charge incorrectly decided it was a public order incident and treated it as such with horrific consequences.
2. Usman Khan was released on parole and, while on parole, murdered two rehabilitation workers and injured three others.
3. Georgia Williams was murdered following a decision to treat a previous offence by Jamie Reynolds, who was convicted in Georgia’s murder, as an assault, rather than an attempted murder, "allowing" him to develop into a full-blown murderer.

In each example, decisions and decision avoidance had fatal consequences. With hindsight, all were wrong, albeit presumably made in good faith at the time. Of course, hindsight is a bias that demonstrates how newly acquired knowledge and information influences the recollection of past information and behaviour (Anderson, 2003). Nonetheless, lessons can be learned from real-world forensic and investigative decision-making, irrespective of whether the decisions turn out to be good or bad.

Optimal Decision-Making

Research reveals that experience is important, because expertise helps professionals to generate numerous hypotheses about what may have occurred, even though it may initially appear obvious (Dando and Ormerod, 2017). Maintaining an open mind, keeping all hypotheses live, and testing hypotheses before discounting them are often key to optimal decision-making. Seeking evidence or information to falsify hypothetical scenarios, rather than seeking evidence or information in support of each, is an accepted marker of effective decision-makers. This approach feels very scientific, but expecting the unexpected rather than resorting to rules of thumb based on experience can reduce satisficing. Satisficing can trigger inadequate decisions because it is a pragmatic, just-enough approach and so is the marker of a lazy decision-maker.

On the other hand, members of a jury are by their very nature inexperienced nonexperts—a group of novice decision-makers coming together to decide the outcome of a criminal case. Research investigating jury decision-making is rare, and most comes from the United States. But several implications for decision-making do emerge. Group deliberations and in-depth discussion of information presented during a trial can positively influence decision-making. Discussion can be useful for widening perceptions, interpretation, and understanding of facts, but it can also leverage conformity, particularly where individuals are not confident or lack understanding.

Where jurors are actively engaged in building a narrative about a case by combining evidence presented during trial, existing world knowledge, and attitudes to construct several possible interpretations, decisions are better explained and accounted for. Building a coherent, plausible, and complete "story" appears to assist jurors to rationalise and manage often competing accounts and large amounts of information, allowing them to collectively discount alternative, less-plausible explanations.

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Take-Home Messages

Decision-making is a complex cognition. While rational and correct decisions are always the goal, individual, environmental, and case factors all combine to make forensic decision-making extremely challenging and error-prone. Nonetheless, a couple of useful take-home messages do emerge from the literature for making decisions outside of forensic settings.

First, keep an open mind for as long as you can, even when the situation or the information presented seems obvious. Before deciding, consider as many possibilities and as much information as you can and then consider all in turn by seeking to disprove, rather than only seeking supporting information. Where appropriate, discuss with others before making decisions. Discomfort during discussions when views and opinions differ should be a warning sign that maybe you have not fully explored or understood the situation. Considering alternative interpretations, even if eventually discounted, reduces lazy pragmatism and a fixed mindset. Finally, consider whether what you are being told makes sense.