Paste your essay in here…Anders Behring Breivik is Norway’s first ‘terrorist’ attacker since WW2 (Lindahl, 2011). He was responsible for killing around 69 people and injuring over 300 people. Although, it is difficult to define what this act should be classified as, was it an act of terrorism or mass murder? Due to the abundance of forms that terrorism can take it is hard to define, however; terrorism can be deemed as an act of violence with a message, which is directed at a larger audience, with a political determination, this act is designed to produce social change, and considered ‘positive’ in the perpetrators eyes (Gov, 2017). In comparison, mass murder is when multiple people are killed at one time (Holmes and Holmes, 2001), It can be argued that Anders can fit within both of these categories. Therefore, throughout this essay the question of which of these forms the attack took will be addressed. Furthermore, this essay will attempt to understand Anders’ case and the investigative strategy used, and the effectiveness of the chosen strategy, this being the PEACE interviewing technique, developed in the 1990’s by law enforcement and psychologists, this interview model will be compared to the Reid technique, proposed by John Reid and his associates in the 1940’s (Buckley, 2012).
Anders was born on the 13th February 1979, in Oslo, Norway, to mother Wenche Behring and Father Jens Breivik. Although, his parents divorced when he was a baby, and he only occasionally saw his father growing up. As a child, 2 reports were filed expressing concerns about his mental health, concluding that he should be removed from his mother’s care, one report claimed that his mother frequently hit him and told him that she wished he was dead, from as early as the age of four years. His mother was described as having a borderline personality disorder; with borderline personality disorder emotions are never constant and there is no stable sense of self, it is associated with the frontolimbic network of neurons (Leichsenring et al, 2011; Minzenberg, 2008). This part of the brain has functioning in emotions and arousal meaning the acts of displayed aggression and sexual fantasies to Anders would not be unusual. During his adolescence he was rebellious, he was involved in the hip hop community and was a graffiti artist (Melle, 2013). As an adult, he had several unsuccessful businesses, whilst he plotted his attack, he rented a farm in Rena, which was owned by an ex cannabis farm owner who was mean whilst in prison. During the time, he rented the farm he claimed to be growing vegetables, when in fact he was perfecting his bomb making and planning the act which took part on the 22nd July 2011. As his business were unsuccessful he had to move back in with his mother, this resulted in him being shunned by the community that he lived in. During this time, he went into a state of withdrawal and isolation. He considered his mother a ‘moderate feminist’ and he did not agree with this philosophy, therefore it could be agreed that this contributed to his far-right winged extremist ideology (Bakker and De Graaf, 2011).
July 22nd, 2011 Anders exploded a homemade fertiliser bomb next to a government building in Oslo, and then continued to the island of Utoya to open fire at a youth camp. The bomb results in eight deaths and the mass shooting killed 69 people (Billing and Stalne, 2011), whom of which were mostly teenagers, and overall there were 319 injured individuals. Before the attack Breivik published a 1500-page manifesto on the web; entitled 2083: A European declaration of independence, where he gave his reasons for the attack, along with his view on the world, describing his military ideology, and displaying islamophobia, a disagreement of feminism and that he was against the idea of a multi-cultural Norway (Billing et al, 2011). The public force counter terrorism unit confronted him on the island of Utoya and he surrendered without resistance. During a confession using the PEACE interviewing technique he stated that the purpose of his attack was to save Norway and western Europe from a Muslim takeover, and that the labour party must ‘pay the price’ for ‘letting down Norway and the Norwegian people’. He was assessed during trial to determine his sanity and 2 reports were concluded. One stated that he was psychotic during the planning of the act, whereas the other report diagnosed him with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) (Melle, 2013), further investigations of Ander’s mental state suggested that the attack came about as a result of narcissistic decompensation (Allely, 2016). This happened due to a loss of self-esteem after losing his business and moving back in with his mother during adulthood. Therefore, he was deemed sane. In 2012, he was convicted of mass murder, causing a fatal explosion and under the terrorism act. He was sentenced to a 21 years preventive detention, before release he will be analysed to assess whether he is still a danger to society and if he is he will serve a further 5 years.
The interviewing technique used by the police to question Breivik was the PEACE technique. Clarke and Milne (2001) states that ‘PEACE’, is an acronym, broken down into P: Planning and preparation. E: Engage and explain. A: Account. C: Closure. E: Evaluation (of the interview and interviewer’s performance). In addition, Walsh and Bull (2010) examined whether the PEACE model conducts a fair and non-coercive interview. A sample of 142 actual suspect interviews were analysed. It was found that the conduction of a good PEACE interview by following the recommended stages lead to better interviews. It was also found that skilled PEACE interviews were associated with accurate full accounts including confessions. Although, they state that the relationship is a result of highly skilled interview professionals, those interviewer that performed well particularly in the preparation, planning and account phases are better interviewers overall as they are more likely to obtain a confession (Walsh and Bull, 2010). In addition, the PEACE interview is effective at preventing illegal and oppressive interviews (Griffiths and Milne, 2006).
However, in the circumstance of Anders, he willingly confessed to the criminal act, he claimed that there was going to be another attack and that he was not alone; if this was to be the case, the interviewing strategy used would not have worked, this is due to the vast time scale that the interview takes place over, in total the main interviewer: Nina Holm, interviewed Anders for around 100 hours, if there was going to be another attack as Anders claimed, it would have been too late; trust in the PEACE model to eventually inform the investigators that Anders was a lone wolf terrorist was a risk, which may have resulted in death of more Norwegian citizens. Anders’ willingness to confess portrays his need for power; his narcissistic personality meant that he was over-ruled by his crave for dominance within every situation, and the PEACE interview method allowed his needs for power to be filled due to the lack of consistent structure and authority within the model (Carter, 2011), meaning there was nothing that would have diminished his craving for power.
An alternative interview technique is the Reid model, this is a method of interrogation, which can result in false confession being elicited (Davis and Leo, 2012). As suggested by Zulawski and Wicklander (2001) this technique involves 9 steps of interrogations, a few examples are; direct confrontation; trying to shift the blame away; trying to minimise the frequency of suspect denials; moving the theme discussed towards offering alternatives; leading the suspect to repeat the admission of guilt and documenting the suspects admission. This approach is intense and direct which can be useful for unwilling suspects, but is also considered unethical due to the unfair conditions that occur within the interview and the presumption of guilt (Inbau et al, 1986), which breaches the Human Rights Act (1998). When considering the case of Anders, he was a willing suspect. Therefore, when considered the effectiveness of this approach, it is not considered the more favourable one. Although, in terms of Anders’ power craze, if the Reid approach was used, the interviewing process would have been shorter and the uncertainty of a further attack was not have been present.
Another critic, of the Reid model is that it allows for misleading questions that result in false memories, thus meaning the Reid interviewing model is reduced in validity when obtaining evidence that can be used within the criminal court. This is supported by Loftus (1975), the findings suggest that questions asked after an event can lead to reconstructions or alterations of the memory. However, contradictory evidence is derived from Bekerian and Bowers (1983) whom suggested that there is no evidence of a loss of original memories, rather a period of forgetting produced under a substantial amount of pressure.
Additionally, the Reid model relies on the use of deception to provoke a confession and truthfulness from the accused, whereas the PEACE model eschews the use of deception, due to it overwhelming the suspect. Moreover, the PEACE interviewing model focuses on fairness, openness and information gathering, rather than principally obtaining a confession (Williamson, 1994), in the case of Anders this enabled them to understand and observe his behaviours and access whether he was being honest throughout the interviewing process, this helped the investigators to infer that Anders was a lone wolf terrorist, disputing his claims of a further attack. The focus on openness would have allowed Anders to boast about the attacks, this behaviour would have manifested from childhood as Anders’ mother was open to him about every aspect of her life due to her borderline personality disorder, this would have been an influence on Anders and considered a socially normal behaviour, making the PEACE model an appropriate interviewing strategy.
There are many other investigative strategies that the police services could have used, these include, intelligence strategies, such as local intelligence systems, crime management systems, overt human intelligence sources, surveillance (conventional and technical overt or covert) and members of the public. One in particular is the use of science and technology. This method is used during the detection and prevention of crime (Ham and Atkinson, 2002). In relation to the Anders case, there was a manifesto published before the attack. If this information was retrieved and the police services were notified, it would have allowed them to discover where the manifesto was published. Therefore, notifying them of his location which would then allow time for the surveillance team to track his movement.
To conclude, Anders is a criminal that is hard to categories; there is evidence to suggest that his attack was due to personal political interest, which therefore suggests that the crime was an attack of terrorism (Gov, 2017). Due to his instability throughout childhood and his diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder it was suggested that the attack was provoked by narcissistic decompensation (Allely, 2016). The use of the PEACE model allowed Anders to boost his self-esteem after the supposed process of narcissistic decompensation, this was evident through the fear activated when he claimed there was going to be a further attack, this fuelled his desire for power and control over the situation. In comparison, the PEACE model was developed by psychologists so the focus on reading behaviours and the enabling of openness as suggested by Williamson (1994), meant that Anders was unable to mislead the investigative professionals into believing alternative truths.
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