“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.