Beyond a Reasonable Doubt - podcast by Davidhorn

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.

Dr Ivar Fahsing speaks with Dr Julia Korkman — psychologist, researcher, and one of the leading voices in legal psychology in the Nordic region — about what investigative interviewing looks like in Finland: what works, what doesn't, and why the gaps matter.
In this episode:
- Why human memory is the core material of criminal justice — and why so few professionals are trained in it
- How the desire to help children speak can introduce the very errors it's meant to prevent
- The Kailinna wrongful conviction case and the cost of confirmation bias
- Cultural humility in cross-border and multilingual interviews — from Finland's sauna culture to collective societies in Southeast Asia
- What a nationwide survey of Finnish police officers revealed about knowledge of interviewing methods
- Why Norway's shift to recording succeeded — and what Finland can learn from it
- How AI is being used to generate alternative hypotheses in child abuse investigations
- Remote hearings, automated transcription, and the future of technology in investigative interviewing
Guest: Dr Julia Korkman, Docent in Psychology, Åbo Akademi University
Host: Dr Ivar Fahsing

Every major interviewing framework - PEACE, KREATIV, ORBIT - distils to the same essentials: stay nice, ask good questions, and listen.
So why does confession-driven culture remain so deeply embedded, even in systems that have formally adopted investigative interviewing?
In this episode of Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, host Børge Hansen speaks with two leading members of iIIRG - the International Investigative Interviewing Research Group - about what actually makes reform stick, and what keeps pulling it back.

Denmark implemented investigative interviewing standards in 2015, yet officers were convicted of coercion in 2021. Thomas Skou Roer reveals why and what's next.
In this candid and thought-provoking episode of Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, host Ivar Fahsing speaks with Thomas Skou Roer, associate professor at University College Copenhagen and former Danish criminal detective with 18 years of service, about the complex realities of implementing investigative interviewing standards in Denmark—and why having good standards doesn't guarantee good practice.