Notes

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Psychologists refer to our knowledge of how our minds work as ‘metacognition’, and of how memory works as ‘meta memory’.

A study conducted on fingerprint analysis found that most fingerprint experts would change their decision about whether a latent print was a positive match based on whether other information about the crime suggested the person was guilty or not (Dror and Charlton, 2006).

DNA analysis is a robust technique based on sound scientific principles, but even it can fall foul of human error. For 16 years, German police chased an elusive female serial killer known as ‘the Phantom of Heilbronn’, as the same female DNA was found at 40 crime scenes, including six murders. It was eventually discovered that the cotton swabs used to collect the samples of DNA had been contaminated by a woman working at the factory making the swabs, and that the crimes were not linked at all! If you want to find out more about this case, have a look at ‘DNA bungle’ haunts German police via BBC News.

System variables are those that might affect eyewitness evidence and that are under the control of the criminal justice system. System variables include the way in which the police question a witness and the procedures for asking a witness to identify a perpetrator in an identification parade.

Estimator variables are those that might affect eyewitness evidence and that are not under the control of the criminal justice system. This includes such things as whether the perpetrator was wearing a disguise or positioned too far away from the witness to allow for accurate identification.

Another factor to consider when exploring psychology and the law is that the law and different systems of justice vary from one country to another.

In an accusatorial system each side presents a case before a court the function of which is limited to deciding who has won. The judges have nothing to do with the preliminary investigations, give no help to either side in presenting its case, and take no active steps to discover the truth, which emerges – or so the theory goes – from the clash of conflicting accounts.

By contrast, the inquisitorial system found in many European countries and other parts of the world is described as: ‘The court is viewed as a public agency appointed to get to the bottom of the disputed matter. The court takes the initiative in gathering information as soon as it has notice of the dispute, builds up a file on the matter by questioning all those it thinks may have useful information to offer – including, in a criminal case, the defendant – and then applies its reasoning powers to the material it has collected in order to determine where the truth lies.’

Not wanting to become involved in a crime or other serious situation is referred to by psychologists as ‘bystander apathy’, and is a phenomenon that has been well researched.

Which suggested when people were alone in the room, or rather when people were the only bystander present, they're quite likely to intervene; in 70% of the cases they would intervene.

Just the presence of one other person in the room (2 people in total) reduces the likelihood of someone intervening from 70% to just 40%.

Being in the presence of a passive bystander, someone who doesn't intervene, reduces the likelihood of intervention from 70% to just 10%. This finding that just the presence of another person reduces the likelihood of intervention has become known as the 'bystander effect'.