Once again: selecting foils as similar to the suspect, or matching the description of the culprit?
| Date | 01 August 2016 |
| Pages | 114-120 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JCP-03-2016-0011 |
| Published date | 01 August 2016 |
| Author | Avraham Levi |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care,Criminology & forensic psychology,Criminal psychology,Sociology,Sociology of crime & law,Deviant behaviour,Public policy & environmental management,Policing,Criminal justice |
Once again: selecting foils as similar to
the suspect, or matching the description
of the culprit?
Avraham Levi
Avraham Levi is based in
Jerusalem, Israel.
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to examine Clark et al.’s (2013) claim that, contrary to the white paper
produced by the American Psychological Association (Wells et al., 1998), the match-to-description method
of choosing foils is inferior to the similarity-to-suspect method.
Design/methodology/approach –Examining the existing empirical evidence.
Findings –There is no difference between the two methods in rate of identifications. Sometimes, however,
the rate of false identifications is larger when the similarity-to-suspect method is used.
Practical implications –The white paper’s recommendation should remain in place.
Originality/value –Keeping the white paper’s recommendation is important to prevent false identifications.
Keywords Lineups, Default values, False identifications, Identifications, Match-to-description,
Similar-to-suspect
Paper type Conceptual paper
The lineup is a procedure in which a person suspected by the police of having committed a crime is
shown to the witness, along with a number of known innocent people (“foils”). If a witness chooses the
suspect, this is taken as evidence of his guilt by the courts. Photos are often used today in place of the
actual people. The most common lineup is the simultaneous lineup, in which the witness views all
the lineup members simultaneously. A fair lineup is one in which each of the foils and the innocent or
guilty suspect have an equal chance of being chosen by people who have never seen the suspect
(“mockwitnesses,”Doob and Kirshenbaum, 1973, who have been given a description of the suspect).
The lineup is the safest eyewitness identification procedure, because the foils provide some
protection to an innocent suspect. However, it is far from perfect. There is ample evidence that
witnesses often choose someone who is not the culprit (Conners et al., 1996; Scheck et al.,
2001; Valentine et al., 2003; Wells et al., 1998). When they choose someone who is not the
suspect but a known innocent, the police know that they have erred. However, in a fair
simultaneous lineup by chance these witnesses who guess “identify”a suspect who is innocent
1/Ntimes, where Nis the lineup size. With the common American lineup size of six, this will
happen 1/6 ¼0.167, or almost 17 percent of the time.
There is a second error that witnesses often make which goes undetected by the police:
witnesses fail to identify guilty suspects (Levi, 1998). While a number of innovative lineup
procedures have been developed to reduce mistaken identifications (Levi, 2006, 2012; Lindsay
and Wells, 1985; Pryke et al., 2004), there have been few procedures available to increase
correct ones that do not simultaneously increase mistaken ones. Luus and Wells (1991)
proposed one method for increasing identifications of culprits.
Received 23 March 2016
Revised 2 July 2016
Accepted 6 July 2016
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JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL PSYCHOLOGY
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VOL. 6 NO. 3 2016, pp. 114-120, © Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 2009-3829 DOI 10.1108/JCP-03-2016-0011
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