The Trauma-Informed Police Sketch Interview

The Trauma-Informed Police Sketch Interview
DBT-Informed Validation, Nonleading Questions, and Witness-Centered Composite Drawing
By Felix Dubois
A witness remembers the eyes clearly. The nose is a blur. The jaw feels wrong every time you redraw it. An investigator is waiting for a usable image, and the witness is beginning to shut down.
What do you ask next?
That question sits at the center of The Trauma-Informed Police Sketch Interview, a practical field guide for forensic artists, investigators, and related professionals who need to turn eyewitness memory into a composite sketch without quietly supplying the missing pieces themselves.
The book focuses on the part of forensic art that can make or break the image: the interview.
Eyewitness memory is reconstructive. Stress, delay, repeated questioning, post-event information, and interviewer behavior can all affect what a witness reports. A polished portrait does not solve those problems. Better interviewing helps you work within them.
This book shows how to create a calmer, more defensible process using trauma-informed police interviewing, nonleading questions, DBT validation principles adapted for forensic settings, and disciplined documentation.
You will learn how to begin with free recall before opening a feature catalog, preserve uncertainty instead of pushing a witness to guess, and move from broad descriptions to specific facial details without planting the answer in the question. The book also shows how to use comparison material carefully, revise a face without anchoring the witness to the current drawing, and recognize when another round of edits is producing motion rather than better information.
A separate section explains DBT-informed validation in plain forensic terms. Validation here does not mean agreeing with a witness, verifying a memory, or providing therapy. It means listening accurately, reflecting what was actually said, making room for uncertainty, and responding to distress without adding facts. These skills can make a victim-centered interviewing approach more humane while keeping the content of the memory in the witness’s hands.
The field guide also addresses the moments that rarely fit neatly into a classroom demonstration: a child witness who wants to please the adult, a witness using an interpreter, a person with hearing or communication needs, a survivor who needs to stop, an investigator who wants the sketch changed to match a suspect, and an artist who realizes a question came out more leading than intended.
Instead of pretending those moments never happen, the book gives you language for handling them.
Inside, you will find guidance on:
— structuring a forensic art interview from preparation through final acceptance;
— protecting eyewitness memory from avoidable suggestion;
— using nonleading questions that still produce usable facial detail;
— adapting DBT validation without crossing into psychotherapy;
— keeping trauma-informed police interviewing procedural, respectful, and evidence-conscious;
— working with children, older adults, disabled witnesses, interpreters, and witnesses from different cultural backgrounds;
— responding to distress with pauses, choices, and clear professional boundaries;
— distinguishing witness-supplied detail from artist-generated structure;
— documenting prior exposure to suspect images, media, or other witness descriptions;
— preserving a completed composite sketch and its case record;
— explaining method and limitations in reports or testimony;
— controlling artist bias, fatigue, and the urge to rescue, hurry, or “improve” the face;
— training with mock witnesses so interview quality improves along with drawing skill.