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Hopefully, the closest I ever get to the inside of an interrogation room will be via the countless true-crime series and documentaries that I watch.

This is one case where ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ doesn’t ring true.

Television shows are very fond of an ending that wraps up nicely with the guilty party offering a full confession. Shots from inside police interrogation rooms have also become very popular.

Crack a confession and case closed, right? Well, not really, and on the latest episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver this was unpacked in greater detail.

A summary via The Guardian:

…confessions can be false and coerced. Of all the convictions overturned by DNA testing, 29% involved a false confession.

While that might seem baffling, “the truth is, there are a number of reasons an innocent person might confess to something they didn’t do,” said Oliver, “and a lot of that comes down to what happens in a police interrogation room.”

…“If an investigator is trying to get you to confess, they can grind you down,” [Oliver said], citing a study which found that false confessions came after an average of 16.3 hours of questioning.

I’ll admit that I struggle to understand why somebody would confess to a crime they didn’t do, but lock me in a room for more than 16 hours that doesn’t have WiFi and a comfy couch and I’ll admit to just about anything.

Consider the below segment a tool to utilise during your next true-crime binge. Over to you, John:

[source:guardian]