Confession games

People might confess if they were beaten or inhumanely interrogated. Irrational people might be tricked into confessing. But there seems to be no place in the rational actor model for false confessions.

The granddaddy of all games, however, suggests that rational people might confess to crimes that they did not commit. The prisoner's dilema is at core a story of how prisoner's may be induced to confess -- irrespective of whether or not they are guilty. If you face a high enough prospect of conviction if an alleged codefendant finks, and if you will be given a lower sentence if you confess first, it can be entirely rational to falsely confess.

So here's a testable hypothesis -- a disproportionate number of false confessions will occur when the confessing defendant is alleged to have a codefendant. Indeed a cursory review I did a few years back of cases posted at The Innocence Project suggest that this might in fact be the case.

You can find more information of the tragedy of wrongful convictions at either of these blogs: www.truthaboutfalseconfessions.com (operated by Alan Hirsch) or http://blog.law.northwestern.edu/bluhm/false_confessions (operated by Steve Drizin).