Consequences of Choice : Exploring Successful and Unsuccessful
Decision-Making Attributes in UK Homicide Investigations
Abstract
Flawed decision-making is widely identified as having led to
miscarriages of justice and failed homicide investigations. This
research explores decision-making by Senior Investigating Officers in UK
homicide investigations, including where initial investigations were
unsuccessful, or resulted in wrongful convictions. It offers a new
‘investigative continuum’ perspective as a means to explore decisions
and for linking the impact of decisions to successful or unsuccessful
outcomes. Using this model, it correlates ‘explorative’, ‘creative’ and
‘impactive’ decisions with positive investigative outcomes. It
corroborates ‘tipping points’ in decision-making processes, identifies a
new feature, ‘Transition Points’, and observes how these can affect
investigative outcomes.