FEATURE IMPROVING EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY


Improving eyewitness testimony C


Eyewitnesses to serious crimes can provide valuable evidence, but the way that evidence is collected and used needs much improvement, says Professor Laura Mickes


RIME RATES ACROSS the UK are on the rise with knife and acid attacks featured prominently and regularly in the news. Eyewitnesses to these crimes can


provide valuable evidence, but the way that evidence is collected and used needs much improvement. Cognitive psychology has had a lot to say about memory in general and the potential pitfalls of memory as an accurate recording of items and events, especially memory for faces. Fortunately, the solutions are simple and inexpensive. Eyewitnesses to crimes are often asked to try


to identify the perpetrator out of a police identity parade, (also commonly known as a lineup). Eyewitnesses are invited to a police identification suite. They are instructed that they will view a series of videos of people (labelled with the number of the position in the parade) one at a time, and they should not make their response until after they have seen everyone twice. They are informed that the person who committed the crime ‘may or may not be in the parade’. After viewing the parade, they then say the number of the person they saw or say that they did not see the perpetrator in the parade. If they did pick someone, it is either a stooge (known innocents) or the suspect. If it’s the stooge, then nothing happens because the person is known to be innocent. If the suspect is picked, then that provides evidence against that person. It’s good news if that person is actually guilty. But it’s bad news if that person is actually innocent.


Consider a hypothetical case of an innocent


suspect, we’ll call James, who is identified from a parade by an eyewitness. Based on that evidence, James is further investigated, charged, and found guilty in a court of law (largely based on the testimony of the eyewitness). He then is imprisoned. What is the cost of this error? It turns out that it’s not a number that is at our fingertips because it includes personal, societal, reputational, and financial costs. We can try to estimate it.


“ Imagine if the eyewitness was


allowed to express how confident they were in their identification


Let’s start with the investigation. An attending


officer, crime scene investigators, an investigating officer, an ID officer, and their supervisors are all involved in the investigation, which takes on average 55 days from the commission of a crime to the charge of a suspect. The average salary for a police officer is about £31,000 per year. To assess the total costs associated with the investigation would require knowing how much time each officer spent during the course of the investigation. But you get the point: Salary costs and resources quite quickly and substantially add up during this process. Let’s next head to the court of law. According


to the Crown Prosecution Service, the cost of one committal for trial at the Crown Court is £3,500. Moving on to prison, the yearly cost of housing a prisoner is £35,000. And let’s say James is imprisoned for 15 years (the average time those who have been exonerated are imprisoned). That’s a total of £525,000 (not accounting for inflation). If James is fortunate enough to be exonerated and if he can provide evidence that there was a miscarriage of justice (that is, if he can prove his innocence), he may receive an ex gratia payment or compensation. The maximum compensation amount is £1,000,000 for those imprisoned for 10 years or more. Once exonerated, it’s back to the drawing


board for the police investigators. They must re-open the case which requires repeating the investigative process.


And all the while, the real perpetrator has been


free to victimise more people. The cost of the emotional fallout is immeasurable. For James, he is at risk of poverty


26 SOCIETY NOW AUTUMN 2018 ”


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