David Mutton, who was the NSW Police’s chief psychologist for 11 years, is now a lecturer at UWS in forensic psychology. “Crime pays,” he said, conceding he’d made a good living out of it.
He was speaking at the Dangerous Ideas conference at the Sydney Opera House. Mutton said that most people think it’s OK if the police spy on lots of people because “if you’re not doing anything wrong, it doesn’t matter”.
But then he gave us an example of how a “cleanskin” (innocent person) can be under surveillance for being unwittingly associated with a criminal — eg. the criminal’s accountant or former school friend. He told a story of how a woman at a bar could get involved with a criminal, unknowingly, and then all her activities, including bedroom gymnastics, would be caught on film, phone, email etc and observed/cheered on by the surveillance team.
Also, if you’re a cleanskin, you can be called in and be forced to tell the truth and spill your guts about anything you know (under pain of five years’ jail if you lie or refuse to talk). These meetings are kept secret (you hope!). “There’s no right to silence,” Mutton said, despite your innocence and lack of involvement.
By monitoring phone conversations, police psychologists can detect criminals’ vulnerabilities and use that to derail them, particularly in interviews.
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