Every year on November 21.
The types of false confessions range wildly from innocent to historically harmful.
Voluntary false confessions are:
- Good natured prank-trolling to cause some harmful confusing that will get resolved soon. “Guess what I just did..”
- To get attention. “I did it and it makes me important!”
- Malicious trolling to make people upset. “I ran over your bike!”
- Protective. To divert attention from the one who actually did it “My friend didn’t do it. I did it!”
Involuntary false confessions are:
- Compliant false confessions. When forced or baited to confess to something you didn’t do. Either to make something bad stop or to get a reward.
- Internalized false confessions. When someone believes they did something that they didn’t do.
False Confession Day is good day to reflect on the differences of the types of false confessions and the impact that they have.
A good prank is just fun, but anything that turns malicious just spreads negativity or is even a big obstruction to justice.
So be careful to what you confess to and be careful in how to get confessions.
It is a terrible thing to extract a confession at any cost.
For you may be wrong and just complicate matters needlessly.
“A scapegoat remains effective
as long as we believe in its guilt.”
–Rene Girard
