Do chili peppers get "hotter" when they are roasted?

It has always been my understanding that the actual "heat" of a pepper does not change...BUT, is further "released" via the cooking/roasting process.

The hottest part of the chili isn’t the seeds, as many believe, but the membranes. They contain capsaicin, an alkaloid that makes the pepper hot. Different varieties of chilis have different levels of heat, even within the same kind of pepper. The environment that each pepper grows in determines the heat level for that particular pepper. “You never know how hot a particular pepper is going to be until you bite into it,” says DeWitt.

[From kansan.com 2005 article, no longer online]

No, Actually when you roast Chilli peppers they become more bland.

What I was intending to say...is that the actual "heat" from the capsaicin does not diminish or intensify as a result of roasting...but, that the roasting process releases capsaicin into the air which would diminish the amount of capsaicin in the pepper...thus, resulting in a capsaicin deprived pepper...rendering it milder.

I do this for a living.

Yes, applying heat to a chilli pepper does release the capsaicin oils spreading throughout the dish you are preparing, eg, a pasta dish, rendering it 'hotter' then eating the chilli raw.

Try a slice of raw hot salami (which is just sprinkled with chilli flakes in the production) and then pan fry a peice. You will definately notice the difference when the oils secrete.

http://www.chowhound.com/post/roasting-jalapenos-high-heat-concentrate-spice-380048