What do police officers know about eyewitness memory? A comparison of knowledge between eyewitness experts and police investigators

In October of 1999 the United States Department of Justice published a set of guidelines to assist law enforcement in the collection of identification evidence. The purpose of the present study is to assess the knowledge possessed by police investigators about the Guidelines and other variables that can impact the accuracy of eyewitness memory. In the present study police investigators were given a questionnaire originally developed by Kassin, Tub, Hosch, and Memon (2001) for "experts" or psychologists, who were teachers and researchers in the area of eyewitness memory. By comparing the responses by police investigators with those provided by the experts a significant lack of correspondence between the knowledge base of investigators verses experts was revealed. Specifically, the investigators differed from experts on 22 of the 30 statements on the questionnaire indicating that those who are actually conducting lineups have limited knowledge of the factors that impact the accuracy of eyewitness memory.

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Author dc:creator

• Dunlap, Emily

Contributors dc:contributor

• Ross, David F.
• College of Arts and Sciences

• Eyewitness identification
• Examination of witnesses--United States
• Identification
• Police lineups

Licence

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language

English, eng

Identifier

LB2369.2 .D864 2003

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholar.utc.edu:theses-2082