Beyond a Reasonable Doubt - podcast by Davidhorn

Fernando Guzzi spent the first half of his career as what colleagues called a 'good confession obtainer'. Then he was asked to teach interrogation at the police academy — and started reading the research. What he found changed everything.
In this episode of Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, Dr Ivar Fahsing speaks with Fernando Guzzi, a Police Commissioner from Santa Catarina, Brazil, about the journey from confession-centred policing to investigative interviewing — and what it means to make that shift inside a system still shaped by the legacy of military dictatorship.
They discuss what happens to trust when the interview dynamic breaks down; why public cooperation with police is an acute problem in Latin America; what 61% of investigators getting confessions right actually means for justice; and how recording technology is now transforming accountability in Brazil's police stations — not just for evidence quality, but for the officers themselves.

In Ireland, suspects have been recorded on video since 1997. Interviewers are still required to write down everything by hand at the same time. Dr Adrian Gates spent his career as the national lead on investigative interview training in An Garda Síochána — and his doctoral research has now quantified the cost of that contradiction.
In this episode of Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, Dr Ivar Fahsing speaks with Dr Adrian Gates about his journey from confession-focused detective to Ireland's foremost advocate for the Enhanced Cognitive Interview; the moment a Detective Superintendent asked him, in front of the assistant commissioner, 'Are you telling me we have been doing it wrong all this time?' — and what he said; and the findings from his research: an accuracy rate of 39%, 4,481 omitted items across 15 interviews, and a process in which interviewers are actively stopping people from talking in order to keep up with their own pen.

Recorded live at the Davidhorn Police Interview Summit 2026 in Manchester, Dr Ivar Fahsing speaks with Vasylyna Yavorska — Ukrainian lawyer, criminal justice reformer, and CEO of JUST Group — about what it means to try to transform a criminal justice system in the middle of a war.
Vasylyna has coordinated Ukraine's national team of investigative interviewing experts since 2017. In this conversation, she talks candidly about the challenge of shifting practitioners away from confession-focused thinking, the structural barriers to scaling investigative interviewing across a large and complex justice system, and the moment in March 2022 — Kyiv still partly occupied — when her team was asked to develop guidelines for interviewing prisoners of war.

In this episode of Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, host Dr Ivar Fahsing speaks with Therese Maria Rytter, international human rights lawyer and outgoing Vice-President of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT), about the critical intersection of legal safeguards, investigative interviewing, and the prevention of torture across Europe.
After nearly 12 years with the CPT and 30 years dedicated to protecting human rights internationally, Ms Rytter brings unparalleled insight into what actually prevents torture and ill-treatment in police custody, prisons, and other detention settings across the 46 member states of the Council of Europe. As Director of Prevention and Accountability at DIGNITY – Danish Institute Against Torture, and co-author of the landmark Mendez Principles on Effective Interviewing for Investigations and Information Gathering, she represents the bridge between international human rights standards and practical implementation in criminal justice systems.
The conversation reveals the CPT's unique and powerful mandate: conducting surprise visits to police stations, prisons, and psychiatric hospitals throughout Europe, sometimes arriving at midnight on Friday nights when cells are fullest. Therese Maria Rytter describes how expert delegations - including lawyers, forensic doctors, psychiatrists, and former police commissioners - spend two weeks in each country, sitting inside cells to speak with detainees, examining injuries, reviewing CCTV footage, and assessing use-of-force records. This unprecedented access allows the CPT to make concrete, evidence-based recommendations tailored to each country's specific context.

What shapes an investigator's mindset — and does it matter more than their training? In this episode, Dr. Ivar Fahsing speaks with Ahmet Demirden, criminal justice academic and former Toronto Police Service officer, about the psychology behind investigative interviewing practice.
Drawing on two decades of experience across Canada, Turkey, and international training contexts, Ahmet Demirden introduces regulatory focus theory as a lens for understanding why officers interview the way they do — and why knowledge alone is rarely enough to change behaviour.
The conversation covers the gap between training and performance, the role of organisational culture and required drivers, the legal complexities of the Turkish inquisitorial system, and the emerging potential of AI and simulation technology to provide the feedback mechanisms that policing has long lacked.