The Shawnee Co. board of commissioners has unanimously approved funding for the county sheriff's department to buy a polygraph instrument, and it's main application will reportedly be for pre-employment polygraph screening. See Alicia Henrikson's article, "Sheriff's department to get polygraph equipment," in today's Topeka Capital-Journal:

http://cjonline.com/stories/020201/com_polygraph.shtml

I e-mailed the commissioners and the sheriff regarding the dangers of relying on pseudoscientific polygraph "tests," on 31 January, but received no replies. They cannot say they weren't warned.

This information may be of some legal importance to any Shawnee County Sheriff's Department employees or applicants who, in the future, are falsely accused of deception. The full text of the messages I sent follow:

1) To the county commissioners:

X-Mozilla-Status: d001
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000
Message-ID: <3A77EEB5.A2827C53@antipolygraph.org>
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 11:54:02 +0100
From: "George W. Maschke" <maschke@antipolygraph.org>
Reply-To: maschke@antipolygraph.org
Organization: AntiPolygraph.org
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 (Macintosh; U; PPC)
X-Accept-Language: en
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Victormiller@aol.com, commission@co.shawnee.ks.us
Subject: The Lie Behind the Lie Detector
X-Priority: 1 (Highest)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Dear Shawnee County Commissioners:

I read in the Captal-Journal that your sheriff is asking you to fund
a polygraph for his department. Undersheriff Dan Breci told the
Capital Journal that, "the perception in law enforcement circles is
that polygraphs are more reliable than voice stress analyzers."

You need to know that neither polygraphy nor voice stress analysis have
been shown by competent scientific research to operate at better than
chance levels of accuracy under field conditions. Polygraph "testing" in
particlar has a built-in bias against the truthful, and yet can be (and
has been) easily beaten by deceptive persons through simple polygraph countermeasures.

While polygraphs (as well as voice stress analyzers) can be useful for
duping naive and gullible suspects into confessing, one must be careful
never to include or exclude anyone as a suspect based on
pseudoscientific procedures like polygraphy or voice stress analysis.
And you should by no means allow the use these devices to judge the
honesty and integrity of applicants for employment.

I invite you to download AntiPolygraph.org's free on-line book, The Lie
Behind the Lie Detector (503kb PDF):

http://antipolygraph.org/lie-behind-the-lie-detector.pdf

You'll find the trickery (not science) on which polygraphy depends laid
bare, and also learn how anyone -- truthful or not -- can produce a
"truthful" polygraph chart.

The $19,700 cost for the polygraph instrument and training would be
better spent training officers in conventional interview and
interrogation techniques, or returned to Shawnee County taxpayers.

Sincerely,

George Maschke
AntiPolygraph.org
http://antipolygraph.org



2) To Sheriff Dick Barta:

X-Mozilla-Status: d001
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000
Message-ID: <3A77E2B3.EBA06E40@antipolygraph.org>
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 11:02:40 +0100
From: "George W. Maschke" <maschke@antipolygraph.org>
Reply-To: maschke@antipolygraph.org
Organization: AntiPolygraph.org
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 (Macintosh; U; PPC)
X-Accept-Language: en
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Dick Barta <richard.barta@co.shawnee.ks.us>
Subject: Polygraph
X-Priority: 1 (Highest)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Dear Sheriff Barta:

I read in the Captal-Journal that you are asking the county
commissioners to fund a polygraph for your department. Your
undersheriff, Dan Breci, told the Capital Journal that, "the perception
in law enforcement circles is that polygraphs are more reliable than
voice stress analyzers."

You need to know that neither polygraphy nor voice stress analysis have
been shown by competent scientific research to operate at better than
chance levels of accuracy under field conditions. Polygraph "testing" in
particlar has a built-in bias against the truthful, and yet can be (and
has been) easily beaten by deceptive persons through simple polygraph countermeasures.

While polygraphs (as well as voice stress analyzers) can be useful for
duping naive and gullible suspects into confessing, you must be careful
never to include or exclude anyone as a suspect based on
pseudoscientific procedures like polygraphy or voice stress analysis.
And you should by no means use these devices to judge the honesty and
integrity of applicants for employment.

I invite you to download AntiPolygraph.org's free on-line book, The Lie
Behind the Lie Detector (503kb PDF):

http://antipolygraph.org/lie-behind-the-lie-detector.pdf

You'll find the trickery (not science) on which polygraphy depends laid
bare, and also learn how anyone -- truthful or not -- can produce a
"truthful" polygraph chart.

The $19,700 cost for the polygraph instrument and training would be
better spent on training your officers in conventional interview and
interrogation techniques.

Sincerely,

George Maschke
AntiPolygraph.org
http://antipolygraph.org



Last modification: George Maschke - 02/02/01 at 06:20:36