A/71/298 at all times, including during the investigation of serious crimes and in situations of armed conflict, and is complemented by a range of attendant standards and procedural safeguards. 7. Nevertheless, the sophisticated normative frameworks in place often do not translate into a reduction in practices of torture, ill-treatment or coercion during questioning, which are frequently used by State agents worldwide during law enforcement investigations of common and serious criminal offences, during military and intelligence operations and during armed conflict. 8. Persons interviewed by authorities during investigations may be confronted with the entire repressive machinery of society. Questioning, in particular of suspects, is inherently associated with risks of intimidation, coercion and mistreatment. The risks are heightened for vulnerable persons and for persons questioned in detention. This holds particularly true during apprehension and the early stages of custody, when the authorities exerting control over the fact and conditions of detention and conducting the investigation are the same. 9. The persistent use of unlawful and improper interviewing practices is triggered by a range of local factors, including the erroneous assumption that mistreatment and coercion are necessary to obtain confessions or elicit information. The misconception that torture is a “necessary evil” is especially prevalent during interviews relating to organized crime and national security offences. In the anti-terrorism context, Governments resort to “ticking bomb scenarios” in attempts to justify the use of abusive and unlawful interviewing practices, implicitly challenging the absolute and non-derogable nature of the torture prohibition under any circumstances. While some have sought to proffer faulty legal interpretations to support the use of torture, a more common policy option has been to refute that certain practices amount to torture or ill-treatment under international law. 10. In many countries, detainees are mistreated during investigations of common crimes. Pressure from politicians, supervisors, judges and prosecutors to solve high volumes of cases and inadequate measures of police performance, including systems of appraisal focusing only on the number of crimes “solved” or convictions, create perverse incentives for arrests and mistreatment. A lack of forensic methodology, training in modern criminal investigation techniques and equipment often also creates the perception that torture, ill-treatment and coercion are the easiest and swiftest ways to elicit confessions or other information. 11. Serious concerns arise in legal systems that place a premium on confessions to establish criminal responsibility. While the admission and realization of guilt can be significant to offenders’ rehabilitation and reintegration, the ability to convict suspects solely on the basis of confessions without further corroborating evidence encourages the use of physical or psychological mistreatment or coercion. Similarly, legal systems that de jure establish that extrajudicial confessions are probati ve of guilt only if corroborated by other evidence nevertheless provide de facto incentives for mistreatment. 12. In some jurisdictions, structural and resource deficiencies in the criminal justice system create conditions conducive to the proliferation of mistreatment. When Governments do not invest sufficient resources in the administration of justice, judges, prosecutors and law enforcement officials lack the necessary training and are overworked, underpaid and more prone to corruption (see 4/25 16-13568