A two-day interviewing method
SAFER is a five-part method for interviewing sex offenders using strategic, empathy-based techniques. It builds the conditions where a person will talk, holds accountability without humiliation, and confirms an accurate account in their own words.
What SAFER is
Rapport beats coercion for accurate information. SAFER turns that finding into a repeatable process any investigator, corrections officer, or supervisor can use. It rests on established research: procedural justice, rapport-based interviewing, and the cognitive interview.
People disclose to a person, not to a procedure. Safety is the on-ramp to the truth.
Understanding a person is never the same as excusing what they did. Humiliation produces denial; respect produces disclosure.
The account is reviewed together and confirmed in the person's own words.
The hidden story
What a person shows is a fraction of what shaped them. SAFER reaches below the surface, not to excuse the offense, but to understand the path and ask better questions.
The five pillars
Create the conditions where a person will talk: rapport, procedural justice, holding space.
Hold the truth without humiliation. Understanding is not excusing.
Explore the origin story and earliest awareness.
Trace the pathway from awareness to offense.
Collaborative accuracy: confirm a shared account in their words.
People tell the truth to someone who treats them as a person, even when that person knows the worst of them.