"Crime and Punishment" and False Confessions

Rinat Kitai-Sangero, Academic Center of Law & Buriness, Ramat Gan, Israel, has published Can Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment Help Us Distinguish between True and False Confessions? at 9 Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law 231 (2011). Here is the abstract.

Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment is also a story about confessions. Raskolnikov, who committed a double murder, and Nikolay, an innocent suspect, each confesses to the same crime. An analysis of Raskolnikov’s and Nikolay's confession demonstrates the complexity of motives that drive the guilty and the innocent alike to confess and points to the distinction between true and false confessions. Finally this novel supports the conclusion that the accused should be required to provide significant details of the crime as a requirement for relying on his or her confession.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.