Live, video, and photo identification: Which eyewitness identification procedure best facilitates recognition?

目击者在目击犯罪后，可以向执法人员提供有关罪犯身份的重要信息。这通常是通过从身份游行中指出罪犯来实现的。身份游行的基本程序是让证人检查一群人，并判断其中一人是否是罪犯，但用于管理身份游行的程序在不同司法管辖区有很大不同。在澳大利亚和南非等国家，游行成员会亲自出现--类似于热门电影中往往描述的身份识别程序。美国和加拿大也使用现场游行，但通过照片(或“面部照片”)进行身份识别要普遍得多。在英国，最近的立法导致了视频技术的广泛使用来展示身份游行。程序上的这种差异回避了一个问题：哪一种是最好的？当考虑到不同技术的实用性时，照片和视频识别显然是最受欢迎的。找到合适的人出现在现场游行中并不总是容易的，而大型照片和视频图像数据库的可用性使得这些替代形式的身份游行更容易构建。视频和拍照游行也比现场游行便宜，因为游行成员每次出现都不需要支付费用。尽管拍照和视频游行的实际好处是显而易见的，但目击者科学家尚未就哪种程序最有可能有助于正确的身份识别决定达成共识。这是一个巨大的社会问题，因为如果证人无法识别罪犯，调查人员可能就没有必要的证据来确保定罪并追究罪犯的责任。还有一种非常真实的可能性，即目击者错误地认出了一个无辜的人。当这种情况发生时，无辜的人被错误定罪的风险增加。错误定罪的情况经常发生，在对根据DNA证据被证明是错误的定罪进行审查时，70%以上的案件出现了错误的身份，这是主要的促成因素(www.Innocenceproject t.org)。有时虚假身份识别超出了司法系统的控制，但数十年的科学研究表明，目击者身份识别政策和程序可以对目击者身份识别的可靠性产生重大影响。这就是为什么当面、以视频或照片展示身份游行成员时，了解身份识别如何受到影响是至关重要的。需要考虑的一件事是，现场直播程序让目击者有机会看到游行成员的整体，而照片和视频程序通常只提供头顶和肩膀的视角。在其他条件相同的情况下，从上到下看到游行成员的能力应该会提高目击者的辨认能力。然而，在实践中，现场身份识别的后勤限制可能会抹去这些理论上的好处。这项拟议的研究将对现场直播、视频和拍照游行进行严格的比较，并将引入一种新的程序，展示整个人的视频。这一新颖的程序旨在保留视频游行的实际优势，但也为目击者提供了现场游行可用的额外记忆线索。调查犯罪和制定目击者鉴定政策的人目前面临着一个悖论：最实用的鉴定程序可能不会产生最佳的鉴定结果。当拟议的研究完成后，数据将向调查人员和政策制定者提供关于哪种身份游行模式产生最佳身份识别结果的信息。

After observing a crime, eyewitnesses can provide law enforcement personnel with important information about the criminal's identity. This is often achieved by pointing out the criminal from an identity parade. The basic procedure for an identity parade is to have the witness inspect a group of people and judge whether one of them is the criminal, but the procedures used to administer identity parades vary substantially across jurisdictions. In countries like Australia and South Africa, parade members appear in person - similar to how identification procedures tend to be depicted in popular films. Live parades are also used in the USA and Canada, but identification from photographs (or "mugshots") is far more common. In the UK, recent legislation has led to the widespread use of video technology to present identity parades. Such disparity in procedures begs the question: Which one is best? When considering the pragmatics of the different techniques, photo and video identifications are the clear favourites. Finding suitable people to appear in a live parade is not always easy, whereas the availability of large databases of photo and video images make these alternative forms of identity parades substantially more manageable to construct. Video and photo parades are also less expensive than live parades because the parade members do not need to be paid each time they appear. Although the practical benefits of photo and video parades are clear, eyewitness scientists have yet to reach a consensus on which procedure is most likely to facilitate a correct identification decision. This is a huge societal problem because if a witness is unable to identify the criminal, investigators may not have the evidence required to secure a conviction and hold the criminal responsible. There is also a very real possibility that an eyewitness will mistakenly identify an innocent person. When this happens, the innocent person is at an increased risk of wrongful conviction. Wrongful convictions happen quite frequently and in a review of convictions that were proven to be wrongful in light of DNA evidence, mistaken identifications were present in over 70% of the cases and was the leading contributing factor (www.innocenceproject.org). Sometimes false identifications are beyond the justice system's control, but decades of scientific research have demonstrated that eyewitness identification policies and procedures can have a significant impact on the reliability of eyewitness identifications. This is why it is crucial to know how identifications are affected by presenting the identity parade members in person, on video, or with photographs. One thing to consider is that live procedures give witnesses the opportunity to see the parade members in their entirety, whereas photo and video procedures typically only provide a head-and-shoulders view. All else equal, the ability to see the parade members from top to bottom should improve eyewitness identification performance. In practice, however, the logistical constraints of live identifications might wipe out any of these theoretical benefits.The proposed research will provide a rigorous comparison of live, video, and photo parades, and it will also introduce a novel procedure that shows videos of the entire person. The novel procedure has been designed to retain the practical advantages of video parades, but also provide witnesses with the additional memory cues that are available for live parades. The people who are investigating crimes and setting eyewitness identification policy are currently facing a paradox: the most practical identification procedure may not produce the best identification outcomes. When the proposed research has been completed, the data will inform investigators and policy-makers on which identity parade modality produces the best identification outcomes.