Identifying the Culprit: Assessing Eyewitness Identification (2014)
Identifying the Culprit
Assessing Eyewitness Identification (2014)
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National Research Council; Policy and Global Affairs; Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education; Committee on Science, Technology, and Law; Committee on Law and Justice; Committee on Scientific Approaches to Understanding and Maximizing the Validity and Reliability of Eyewitness Identification in Law Enforcement and the Courts
Eyewitnesses play an important role in criminal cases when they can identify culprits. Estimates suggest that tens of thousands of eyewitnesses make identifications in criminal investigations each year. Research on factors that affect the accuracy of eyewitness identification procedures has given us an increasingly clear picture of how identifications are made, and more importantly, an improved understanding of the principled limits on vision and memory that can lead to failure of identification. Factors such as viewing conditions, duress, elevated emotions, and biases influence the visual perception experience. Perceptual experiences are stored by a system of memory that is highly malleable and continuously evolving, neither retaining nor divulging content in an informational vacuum. As such, the fidelity of our memories to actual events may be compromised by many factors at all stages of processing, from encoding to storage and retrieval. Unknown to the individual, memories are forgotten, reconstructed, updated, and distorted. Complicating the process further, policies governing law enforcement procedures for conducting and recording identifications are not standard, and policies and practices to address the issue of misidentification vary widely. These limitations can produce mistaken identifications with significant consequences. What can we do to make certain that eyewitness identification convicts the guilty and exonerates the innocent?
Identifying the Culprit makes the case that better data collection and research on eyewitness identification, new law enforcement training protocols, standardized procedures for administering line-ups, and improvements in the handling of eyewitness identification in court can increase the chances that accurate identifications are made. This report explains the science that has emerged during the past 30 years on eyewitness identifications and identifies best practices in eyewitness procedures for the law enforcement community and in the presentation of eyewitness evidence in the courtroom. In order to continue the advancement of eyewitness identification research, the report recommends a focused research agenda.
Identifying the Culprit will be an essential resource to assist the law enforcement and legal communities as they seek to understand the value and the limitations of eyewitness identification and make improvements to procedures.
Behavioral and Social Sciences — Law and Justice
Behavioral and Social Sciences — Policy, Reviews and Evaluations
National Research Council. 2014. Identifying the Culprit: Assessing Eyewitness Identification. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/18891.
Paperback: 978-0-309-31059-8
Interactive: Identifying the Culprit
Summary (Italian translation)
Video(s):
Science Unscrambled: Identifying the Culprit
Front Matter i-xvi
Summary 1-8
1 Introduction 9-20
2 Eyewitness Identification Procedures 21-30
3 The Legal Framework for Assessment of Eyewitness Identification Evidence 31-44
4 Basic Research on Vision and Memory 45-70
5 Applied Eyewitness Identification Research 71-102
6 Findings and Recommendations 103-120
Appendixes 121-122
Appendix A: Biographical Information of Committee and Staff 123-132
Appendix B: Committee Meeting Agendas 133-138
Appendix C: Consideration of Uncertainty in Data on the Confidence-Accuracy Relationship and the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) Curve 139-154
This interactive infographic from the National Academies Press highlights the key messages and recommendations in Identifying the Culprit, with references to the contents of the full report.
An overview of Identifying the Culprit by Thomas D. Albright, Co-Chair of the Committee on Scientific Approaches to Understanding and Maximizing the Validity and Reliability of Eyewitness Identification in Law Enforcement and the Courts.
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