Offender Identification

Description

Forensic Psychology Mind Map on Offender Identification, created by Wendy Frogley on 09/25/2014.
Wendy Frogley
Mind Map by Wendy Frogley, updated more than 1 year ago
Wendy Frogley
Created by Wendy Frogley over 10 years ago
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1

Resource summary

Offender Identification
  1. Memory
    1. Recognition
      1. The ability to elicit stored material through the use of a cue.
      2. Recall
        1. The ability to elicit stored material without any type of external cue.
        2. The Memory Model - This describes the process of creating, storing, and relating memories and how at each stage memory may be affected.
          1. 1) INPUT - Witness - Age, gender, race, personality, intelligence. Situation - Stress/Arousal, Event duration, weapons effect, frequency, illumination.
            1. 2) STORAGE - Passage of time, rehearsal, meaning/simulation heuristics, post event information (planted memories)
              1. 3) OUTPUT - Type of questioning, use of interview protocols, confidence, false memories.
            2. 3 main purposes of eyewitnesses: 1) Assist police in identifying a suspect. 2) Assist police in confirming their identity. 3) Provide testimony at trial.
              1. Yerkes-Dodson Law
                1. An individuals performance can be enhanced to an optimal point through arousal or motivation. However, if the individual is over-stimulated it could possibly lead to stress and failure. This is evident in video games such as Modern Warfare where you are motivated to do well and when you end up achieving many kills, you may begin stressing then die soon afterwards.
                2. Elizabeth Loftus - Created a study whereby she induced false memories of being lost in a shopping mall as a child crying. After 3 suggested interviews 1/4 of the participants developed a false memory. A similar study whereby people were given false memories of knocking a punch bowl over a bride and groom at a wedding yielded false memory results of 1/4 of participants. Another study created false memories of a viscous animal attack. The complete false memory rate was 26% and partial memory was 30%.
                  1. System variables
                    1. Live Line-up, photo line-up.
                      1. Fillers - A line up contains only one suspect and known innocent 'fillers' (distractors or foils). Too much similarity between fillers and the suspect confuse witnesses and cause a drop in accurate identifications. Dissimilar fillers increase the risk that innocent suspects will be identified. Therefore fillers should fit the verbal description of the perpetrator given by the witness but no further similarities should be sought.
                        1. Prior instructions - Eyewitnesses need to be told prior to viewing a lineup that the actual perpetrator might or might not be present in the lineup. The effect of this variable is large and consistent. The instruction prevents witnesses from making the assumption that the person who looks most like the perpetrator is them. Steblays meta analysis shows a 42%reduction in mistakes when the instruction in given.
                        2. Show up - An identification procedure with only the suspect andf no fillers.
                          1. Sequential versus simultaneous - Standard police lineups show all 6 or 8 people at one time. With this method eyewitnesses tend to compare all members to determine which one most loosely resembles the perpetrator (relative judgement). In the sequential line up the witness is presented with one lineup member at a time and they must make a decision whether each person is the perpetrator before they are allowed to view the next person. The two methods have the same correct identification rate when the offender is present , when not present the rate was 26% higher.
                          2. Estimator Variables
                            1. Weapons Effect
                            2. Event Memory
                              1. The ability to describe details of a critical event such as which hand the perpetrator used to hold a gun. colour of a getaway car etc.
                                1. System variables - Exposure to misleading questions (debate remains over whether this causes new memories, alters old memories, or the compliance effect).
                                2. Identification Memory
                                  1. The ability to select a perpetrator from a photo or live lineup.
                                  2. History
                                    1. The U.S. Department of Justice released the first national guide for collecting and preserving eyewitness evidence in October 1999, called Eyewitness Evidence: A Guide for Law Enforcement.
                                      1. Hugo Munsterberg - In the early 1900 he recognised that psychology had the potential to inform the criminal justice system about the nature of errors in eyewitness testimonies. He focused on post event assessment (identifying errors after they occurred).
                                        1. In the late 1970s the focus was on preventing errors before they occur.
                                          1. Fisher and Geiselman analysed American police interviews in 1980s, finding that police make systematic, avoidable errors that limit the amount of information the elicit. By asking too many closed ended questions, frequently interrupting eyewitness narratives, asking predetermined inflexible questions,
                                          2. The cognitive interview
                                            1. 1) The social dynamics between the witness and interviewer. Achieved by asking open ended questions and allowing ample time to finish their answers
                                              1. 2) The eyewitness's memory. Recalling a traumatic event is difficult because it requires focused attention and therefore can benefit from the application of mnemonic principles. Achieved by conducting the interview at a slow pace, and asking few and primarily open ended questions. Mnemonic instructions such as reinstating the context of the original event and encouraging the witness to recall the event though different retrieval pathways facilitate memory by taking advantage of the encoding specificity principle. The cognitive interviewer is also trained ask questions that are sensitive to individual differences.
                                                1. 3) Communication between the witness and interviewer. Police fail at this because they rarely communicate how much information they need, and at what level of detail. The cognitive interviewer encourages non verbal expressions of knowledge such as sketches.
                                                  1. Cognitive interviews have elicited between 35 and 75% more information than typical police interviews in studies, without an increase in incorrect responses.
                                                    1. Intended to increase the amount of correct eyewitness testimony. It attempts to enhance eyewitness recall by improving 3 aspects of the interview:
                                                    2. 258 people convicted by juries in the US have been freed by DNA testing, 200 of these cases involved incorrect eyewitness identification.
                                                      1. General impairments of identification performance - Witnesses assume the culprit is in the line up. When they are warned that a lineup may not contain the culprit they are less likely to make a selection. short exposure duration, divided attention, and long viewing distances, wearing a disguise, differing race, undermine encoding.
                                                        1. Specific Suspect Biases - Confirming feedback after a witness makes a positive identification, presence of fillers in a lineup who do not fit the description of the suspect, misattributed familiarity due to repeated identification procedures such as seeing a mugshot before a line up.
                                                        2. Confidence Accuracy - Only a weak and inconsistent correlation.
                                                          1. The US Supreme court has identified self confidence as 1 of the 5 factors to be considered in assessing the competence and admissibility of eyewitnesses,
                                                            1. Nisbett & Wilson’s study found that people often cannot report the actual causes of their own behaviour.
                                                              1. Videotape feedback can encourage self observation. Retrospective self awareness promotes in people a realistic understanding of their own behaviour.
                                                                1. Retrospective self awareness increases the accuracy confidence relation in 2 potential ways: retrieval-cue hypothesis (forcing subjects to introspect, therefore giving them access t previously overlooked internal cues) or The self- perception hypothesis (providing external information that is necessary for indirect inferential processes).
                                                                  1. People including jurors believe a confident witness is an accurate one.
                                                                    1. Eyewitness accuracy is a function of memory where as confidence is a function of social variables - Eyewitnesses who make a mistaken identification and are then told they made the correct choice undergo confidence inflation.Repeated questioning can also cause confidence inflation.
                                                                    2. Expert testimony - Eyewitness experts criticise biased lineups, failure to give proper pre instructions in order to encourage the justice system to develop better methods of collecting eyewitness evidence. Courts rarely suppress testimony even when biased line up procedures are used.
                                                                      1. Media - Most media coverage portrays the image that eyewitness testimony is unreliable and nothing can be done to improve this.
                                                                        1. DNA Exoneration - Forensic DNA was introduced into the American courts in 1989. The vast majority of DNA exoneration cases involve mistaken eyewitness identification.
                                                                          1. Janet Reno - US Attorney General read the 1996 report showing that 80% of DNA exoneration cases involved incorrect eyewitness identification. She later ordered a panel be formed in 1998 to address these concerns. A team worked together tp create the guide. The police were supportive of national guidelines, however prosecutors weren't. The guide calls for:
                                                                            1. Establishing Rapport - Important at many stages, from the operator who takes the emergency call to the first police officer on the scene and follow up investigators. Witnesses are more likely to invest their time and energy throughout the investigation if their personal needs are addressed. Encouraging the witness to volunteer - Eyewitnesses rarely provide unsolicited information due to the interviewer playing the dominant role. Asking open ended questions - Blatantly suggestive questions alter witness recollections. Open ended questions are more apt to be non leading and encourage witnesses to take a more active role. Typical interviews contain only 3 open ended questions and witnesses were interrupted on average 7.5 seconds into their answers.
                                                                              1. Cautioning against guessing- Eyewitnesses may feel compelled to guess due to the imbalance between social status of themselves and the police. When enticed to guess or not cautioned against guessing, they will make many more incorrect responses. One suspect per procedure - Placing more than one suspect in a line up inflates the chance of mistaken identification. Selection of line up fillers - Where there is limited encryption, the fillers should match the suspect in significant features. Prelineup instructions - Instructing the witness that the suspect may or may not be present helps eliminate the innocent.Avoiding post identification suggestions - If an identification is made avoid reporting to the witness any information regarding their selection prior to gaining a statement about certainty. The sequential line up - This is the preferred method for both live and photo line ups.
                                                                                1. Shortcomings of the guide - Not naming the sequential line up as the preferred method and not suggesting double blind line ups.
                                                                              2. Verbal overshadowing - A phenomena where pressing a witness to describe a face diminishes their ability to later recognise that face.
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