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Saturday, July 5, 2025

Polygraph?

by

Vijay Maharaj
341 days ago
20240729
Vijay Maharaj, Secretary General of the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha

Vijay Maharaj, Secretary General of the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha

“Sci­en­ter” is a Latin term that means “know­ing­ly”. It cov­ers the men­tal state in which one has knowl­edge that one’s ac­tion, state­ment, etc, is wrong, de­cep­tive or il­le­gal.

De­spite its pop­u­lar nick­name, the ‘lie de­tec­tor,’ a poly­graph is not a mag­i­cal truth ma­chine. In­stead, it’s a phys­i­o­log­i­cal de­tec­tion of de­cep­tion (PDD) in­stru­ment that records and analy­ses var­i­ous bod­i­ly re­spons­es while you an­swer a se­ries of ques­tions.

These re­spons­es typ­i­cal­ly in­clude:

• Heart rate: Mea­sured through blood pres­sure cuffs on the arm, changes in heart rate can in­di­cate in­creased stress or anx­i­ety, of­ten as­so­ci­at­ed with de­cep­tion.

• Res­pi­ra­tion: Sen­sors at­tached to your chest or ab­domen mon­i­tor breath­ing rate and depth, as changes in breath­ing pat­terns can al­so re­flect height­ened ner­vous sys­tem ac­tiv­i­ty.

• Skin con­duc­tiv­i­ty: Elec­trodes placed on your fin­ger­tips mea­sure fluc­tu­a­tions in sweat pro­duc­tion, as­so­ci­at­ed with the ‘fight-or-flight’ re­sponse trig­gered by po­ten­tial de­cep­tion.

In the past, the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice was en­gaged in de­ter­min­ing the men­tal state of po­lice of­fi­cers and whether they had the req­ui­site sci­en­ter for the com­mis­sion of crimes. In do­ing so, is­sues were raised sur­round­ing the rights of the po­lice of­fi­cers who were sub­ject­ed to a poly­graph test.

It ap­pears that there has nev­er been a pol­i­cy of screen­ing job ap­pli­cants in the po­lice ser­vice by sub­ject­ing them to poly­graph/lie de­tec­tor tests as a pre­con­di­tion to em­ploy­ment. Over the years, many of­fi­cers have been trans­ferred from their orig­i­nal posts and are al­ready liv­ing with in­jury to their rep­u­ta­tions and the or­deal of try­ing to ex­plain their re­fusal to take a lie de­tec­tor test.

The ques­tions are sim­ple. “Do you re­ceive re­mu­ner­a­tion for al­low­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty of il­le­gal weapons and drugs en­ter­ing our coun­try? Are you aware of the crim­i­nal el­e­ments who are in­volved in such a prac­tice? Have you op­er­at­ed as a po­lice of­fi­cer to have … deal with these crim­i­nal el­e­ments to have them ar­rest­ed? Are you aware of where these lo­ca­tions are, who is do­ing it, and have you op­er­at­ed in a pro­fes­sion­al man­ner, be­com­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer?”

I can’t imag­ine that the ques­tions posed to of­fi­cers would be lim­it­ed to what the com­mis­sion­er has de­tailed. There would have to be a build-up of some more syn­tax-friend­ly sen­tences posed to of­fi­cers.

Fur­ther, prop­er­ly con­duct­ed poly­graph tests con­sist of many in­ter­nal cross-checks in the form of com­par­ing re­spons­es to con­trol and rel­e­vant ques­tions. The fi­nal di­ag­no­sis is nev­er based on a sin­gle re­sponse to one ques­tion. The poly­graph, like oth­er me­chan­i­cal or elec­tri­cal lie de­tec­tors, mea­sures in­vol­un­tary phys­i­cal re­spons­es to ques­tions, and from these re­spons­es, poly­g­ra­phers at­tempt to de­ter­mine whether the ex­am­i­nee is ex­hibit­ing the stress as­so­ci­at­ed with ly­ing.

The ma­jor phys­i­cal re­ac­tions mea­sured are blood pres­sure, pulse rate, breath­ing pat­terns, and gal­van­ic skin re­sponse—a vari­a­tion of skin con­duc­tiv­i­ty caused by sweat­ing. The ques­tions re­main­ing in many minds sur­round the law­ful­ness of car­ry­ing out these tests and the ac­cu­ra­cy and re­li­a­bil­i­ty of the poly­graph ma­chines them­selves. More im­por­tant than the poly­graph ma­chine or the ques­tion­ing method is the com­pe­tence of the poly­g­ra­ph­er.

Fac­tors used to eval­u­ate poly­g­ra­ph­er com­pe­tence in­clude,

(1) whether the poly­g­ra­ph­er grad­u­at­ed from an ac­cred­it­ed poly­graph school. Do these peo­ple hold mem­ber­ships in re­lat­ed pro­fes­sion­al as­so­ci­a­tions?

(2) Lev­el of ex­pe­ri­ence. Can they pro­duce charts that can be eas­i­ly read by oth­er poly­g­ra­phers, and do they pos­sess the abil­i­ty to nu­mer­i­cal­ly ‘score’ chart re­sults?

On­line re­search­es on poly­graphs re­veal that to avoid the un­re­li­a­bil­i­ty of ‘quick­ie’ ex­am­i­na­tions, the poly­graph test must last at least 90 min­utes.

Poly­g­ra­phers ought not to con­duct more than five tests per day, and peo­ple to be sub­ject­ed to the test­ing are en­ti­tled to: ter­mi­nate the test any time; take on­ly tests that are not de­grad­ing or need­less­ly in­tru­sive; avoid test­ing if they have a med­ical or psy­cho­log­i­cal con­di­tion.

Rea­son­able writ­ten no­tice must be giv­en to the of­fi­cer to be test­ed of the date, time, and lo­ca­tion of the test and the right to con­sult an at­tor­ney; be in­formed in writ­ing about the poly­graph process and the in­stru­ments that will be used; know whether the test­ing area will have a two-way mir­ror, cam­era or oth­er ob­ser­va­tion de­vice; a writ­ten copy of the test re­sults; and have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­view all test ques­tions be­fore they are asked and not be asked any ‘sur­prise’ ques­tions.

Some coun­tries have im­ple­ment­ed leg­isla­tive pro­vi­sions to per­mit poly­graph­ing. Whether that is re­quired here in T&T is left to the le­gal minds. The trans­fer­ring of of­fi­cers due to their re­fusal and/or fail­ure to take poly­graphs has not lift­ed the pub­lic’s con­fi­dence in the po­lice ser­vice. It has in­stead am­pli­fied fears of pos­si­ble links to oth­er el­e­ments.

There­fore, what may be re­quired is the ed­u­ca­tion of the po­lice ser­vice and the na­tion and a cal­i­brat­ed man­ner of in­tro­duc­ing poly­graph­ing to en­sure its ef­fec­tive­ness in weed­ing out rogue of­fi­cers among the no­ble aims.

Vi­jay Ma­haraj is the sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha. 


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