The purpose of the visit was participation in trainings on preparing specialists for conducting procedural interviews with witnesses and victims, as well as mastering modern European approaches to interviewing vulnerable categories of persons.
Representatives of the Departments of Criminal Procedure, Psychology, Sociology and Pedagogy, as well as the Department of Criminalistics and Pre-Medical Training, became participants in trainings on conducting extended cognitive interviews with witnesses and victims, as well as specialized interviews with minors and vulnerable victims and witnesses.
The events were attended by Professor of the Department of Criminalistics and Pre-Medical Training Ihor Pyrih, Head of the Department of Psychology, Sociology and Pedagogy Nataliia Komykh, and Professors of the Department of Criminal Procedure: Volodymyr Fedchenko, Olena Soldatenko, and Police Major Viktoriia Rohalska.
The trainings took place at the Garda College in Templemore, Ireland. Participants also included investigators from the investigative departments of the Main Directorates of the National Police in Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, Poltava, Sumy, Kharkiv and Donetsk oblasts. The trainings on conducting procedural interviews were organized by the Mobile Unit of the Advisory Mission of the European Union in Ukraine and the National Police of Ireland.
Participants learned about the Irish experience of implementing and applying procedural interviews during interrogations of witnesses and victims and conducted such interviews under the supervision of experienced trainers and practitioners.
Representatives of DSUIA shared with their Irish colleagues the experience of implementing the procedural interview methodology in the practical activities of Ukrainian investigators and prosecutors and in the educational process of higher education applicants. In addition, from DSUIA, the college leadership was presented with research on procedural interviews, co-authored by Professor of the Department of Criminal Procedure, Police Major Viktoriia Rohalska, who is a national expert on this issue.
As a result of the training, all participants received the relevant certificates and commemorative tokens. The conducted training allowed to obtain the necessary competencies for preparing investigators of a new type, capable of professionally and ethically interacting with witnesses and victims.
The next step is the implementation of the acquired knowledge in the educational process of Dnipro State University of Internal Affairs, as well as the development for representatives of pre-trial investigation bodies, in particular the National Police of Ukraine and prosecutors, of an advanced national-level program on procedural interviews with witnesses and victims with an emphasis on the vulnerabilities of participants.
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