Antipolygraph

In crime and law enforcement, truth is the Holy Grail. The justice system is established to determine fact from fiction, and to judge the credibility of statements from witnesses, victims and defendants. But it’s a system that is prone to bias. Lawyers can draw on sexist cultural stereotypes to manipulate juries; judges can be racist , declare victims responsible for their own rape, or state that abusive husbands are otherwise ‘good men’ . A device or system that could accurately determine if someone is telling the truth has the potential to transform the justice system. Enter the polygraph test. Commonly known as a lie detector, polygraph tests have been popularised by the Jeremy Kyle Show, which uses lie detectors for dramatic effect to ‘prove’ whether a hapless partner is cheating. The show also makes use of paternity tests – a legitimate instrument that unwittingly lends credibility to the polygraph’s junk science. Despite the lie detector’s dubious nature, the government ...