Comments on: Lazy Lineup Study

By: billswift

billswift — Wed, 28 May 2008 03:05:31 +0000

@luispedro – You got it backwards.

Doing away with any type of suspect protection (presumption of innocence, fair trial, &c) always **INCREASES** the number of convicted criminals, while also **INCREASING** the number of convicted not-guilty persons.

By: luispedro

luispedro — Tue, 27 May 2008 23:08:35 +0000

Doing away with any type of suspect protection (presumption of innocence, fair trial, &c) always reduces the number of convicted criminals, while also reducing the number of convicted not-guilty persons.

By: billswift

billswift — Tue, 27 May 2008 23:02:16 +0000

You might want to read Elizabeth Loftus’s Witness for the Defense. It has some stories about how police actually run/ran lineups, and some of the stupid (or evil, it’s hard to tell the difference unless they brag) things they’ve done.
P.S. Loftus is a psychologist specializing in the study of memory, she has a couple of other good books out that I’ve read.

By: Recovering irrationalist

Recovering irrationalist — Tue, 27 May 2008 22:50:06 +0000

most striking finding was that the number of correct identifications dropped from 65% under British rules, to 36% under the strict rules.

So (if representative) 45% of identifications are down to either official's influence or just those biases dependent on simultaneous vs sequential presentation? I dread to think the percentage with all biases included.

By: LemmusLemmus

LemmusLemmus — Tue, 27 May 2008 21:47:21 +0000

DL,

I think you’re strongly overestimating people’s ability to handle probabilities. In fact, I wouldn’t want to be on such a jury.

By: Dynamically Linked

Dynamically Linked — Tue, 27 May 2008 21:03:29 +0000

Instead of picking one person from the line-up, we should have the witness assign a probability to each person plus “none of them”. Then blind vs. non-blind and simultaneous vs. sequential won’t matter, since the jury can just factor out the influence of the procedure on the probability assignments.

By: LemmusLemmus

LemmusLemmus — Tue, 27 May 2008 20:28:37 +0000

I, too, second the first commenter, and I also second Robin’s view that it’s a shame that this kind of thing is not better researched. It would seem to be rather important, no?

Of course, you shouldn’t judge reality based on fictional crime TV programmes, but I always wondered whether it would not be better to have in a lineup, say, seven tall men with short dark hair and glasses rather than seven men that look wildly different.

Does anyone know whether things actually work this way?

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 27 May 2008 18:18:16 +0000

Sheesh! Replace that second “false positive” with “false negative.” I’m clearly in serious need of another coffee.

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 27 May 2008 18:16:54 +0000

Clarification:
By “false positive” I meant picking the suspect even if that person is the not the person the witness saw, and by “false positive” I meant picking a foil.

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 27 May 2008 17:31:58 +0000

A good way to administer a multiple choice exam is to penalize for a wrong answer and give a small reward for no answer (and of course the largest reward for a correct answer)–we most of all wish to discourage guessing, and hence false positives (false negatives are of course a good thing in police line-ups as they show immediately that the witness is not reliable). Must these witness pick a “suspect” or can they choose not to answer? If not, I’d also be curious as to which method produces more non-answers.