Dr Catriona Havard<\/a>,\nSenior Lecturer in Psychology at The Open University, led the research which\nexamined the two systems that Police Forces in the UK use for virtual identity\nparades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dr Havard said: \u201cID parades are one of the most common ways to identify criminals, with police conducting over 100,000 each year in the UK alone, and they can be powerful evidence in securing convictions. However, eyewitness evidence is notoriously error prone. Eliminating any elements which might affect accuracy is one way the Police can help reduce false identifications.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Researchers ran tests to examine the accuracy of eye witness\nidentifications for own-race and other-race faces and found that people were\nmore accurate in identifying people of the same race as them. The research also concluded that witnesses\nare more likely to incorrectly identify an innocent face from a line-up when\nbackground screen colours are varied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eyewitness identification is not used only in the UK, but in\na number of countries in Europe and the USA. The Innocence Project<\/a>, which\naims to overturn and prevent wrongful convictions, states, \u201cMistaken eyewitness identifications\ncontributed to approximately 70% of the more than 350 wrongful convictions in\nthe United States overturned by post-conviction DNA evidence.\u201d <\/em>The Innocence\nproject also suggests that a suspect should not stand out from the other\nmembers of a lineup in any way, and that photographs should be selected that do\nnot bring unreasonable attention to the suspect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although line-ups use a standard background, often a screen or a white wall, variations in lighting and cameras can result in slight differences in the hues of background for line-up members. Having differences in the background of the line-ups can mean that some individuals may stand out more than other individuals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The research team created a set of ten images, five of which\nhad very slightly different green background hues. They showed volunteers a face for five\nseconds then presented the ten faces and asked them to identify the original\nface shown. Only half of the tests included the original face to test whether\nthe eye witness volunteers would falsely identify someone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Dr Havard concludes: \u201cThe findings of this study have real world implications for reducing cases of mistaken identification that could lead to wrongful convictions. Although there are some factors, such as own-race bias, that can\u2019t be controlled by the police, other factors such as having uniform line-up backgrounds can be controlled. This will ensure that any line-up member doesn\u2019t stand out, and reduce false identifications.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The research team was Dr Catriona Havard, The Open University, Dr Martin Thirkettle, Sheffield Hallam University, and Dr Stephanie Richter, The Open University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Research shows differing background colours in Police ID parades can affect eye witness accuracy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":12739,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[916,1525,1640,1740,1849],"class_list":["post-12736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society-politics","tag-forensic-psychology","tag-news-home","tag-ou-home","tag-police","tag-psychology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Catriona](\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Catriona-Havard-571x600.jpg\")
Line-up background variations are problematic<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Findings show\ndifferent background hues affect identification accuracy<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/ID-Parade-1-1050x591.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nReal world implications for police identity parades<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n