A new technique which introduces a “mystery man” or silhouette of an additional person in police line-ups, improves evidence given by child witnesses by 30 per cent, according to psychologists at The Open University.
The inclusion of a silhouette in video line-ups means that the children are more likely to choose it if the culprit is not in the line-up, thus reducing levels of false identification and making children more reliable witnesses.
"Under the current system when taking part in police investigations, children feel under more pressure than adults to identify the culprit and are at risk of choosing the wrong person if the culprit is not in the line-up," said Dr Catriona Havard at the OU’s Forensic Cognition Research Group, who led the study. “At the moment, this happens up to 70 per cent of the time.”
The results published this week in the journal Psychology Crime and Law (Monday 20 May) reveal that if children are presented with a silhouette of a person, or a "mystery man" as they like to call him, as an additional person in the line-up, they are more likely to choose the silhouette if the culprit is not in fact in the police line-up. Read the paper
This is an approach that can be easily incorporated into police line-up procedures and currently is being incorporated into a White Paper to inform legislation.