The Accuracy of Eyewitness Identification in Lineups

阵容中目击者识别的准确性

• 批准号: 1655265
• 负责人: Margaret Bull Kovera
• 金额: $ 30.69万
• 依托单位: CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-05-01 至 2023-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1655265&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Accuracy; Eyewitness; Identification; Lineups

In criminal justice it is critical to identify guilty suspects accurately and avoid mistaken identification of innocent suspects. Consequently, best practices for constructing lineups provide that suspects should not stand out from other lineup members. Yet, data has established that criminal suspects with facial features matching an African phenotype are more likely to be chosen from a lineup than those with less Black or African features. This puts innocent suspects with African facial features at risk of misidentification, especially if lineups are constructed with suspects having more African facial features than other lineup members. This project examines whether certain facial features influence mistaken identification of innocent suspects and correct identifications of guilty ones. It thus will provide information designed to improve the accuracy of eyewitness identification, as well as guidance to judges, attorneys, and jurors when evaluating the identification of phenotypically African suspects.This project will involve a series of studies that examine how phenotypic facial features affect the accuracy of eyewitness identification. First, this project will test whether phenotypic bias (the tendency to view people with African features as criminal) in eyewitness identification is due to stereotype influence during the encoding of witnessed events, failures to use deliberative processes to correct for stereotype influence on judgments, or a combination of the two. This study also will test assumptions behind applied lineup theory, which suggests that automatic recognition processes lead to accurate identifications and deliberate processes introduce bias. These outcomes are in opposition to dual-process theories of stereotyping, which predict that phenotypic bias would influence judgments automatically and that deliberate processes would be required to correct for the biasing effects of stereotypes. Further studies in this project explore the interaction of phenotypic bias with factors that bias witnesses toward mistaken identifications. De-identified data from the project will be made publicly available. As a result, this project will test multiple theoretic foundations on lineups, as well as the potential mechanisms behind phenotypic bias, which may impair the accuracy of eyewitness identification.

在刑事司法中，准确识别有罪嫌疑人、避免误判无罪嫌疑人至关重要。因此，构建阵容的最佳实践规定，嫌疑人不应从其他阵容成员中脱颖而出。然而，数据表明，面部特征符合非洲表型的犯罪嫌疑人比那些黑人或非洲特征较少的犯罪嫌疑人更有可能从阵容中被选中。这使得具有非洲面部特征的无辜嫌疑人面临被误认的风险，特别是如果阵容中的嫌疑人比其他阵容成员具有更多的非洲面部特征。该项目研究某些面部特征是否会影响对无辜嫌疑人的错误识别以及对有罪嫌疑人的正确识别。因此，它将提供旨在提高目击者识别准确性的信息，并在评估非洲表型嫌疑人的识别时为法官、律师和陪审员提供指导。该项目将涉及一系列研究，探讨表型面部特征如何影响目击者识别的准确性。首先，该项目将测试目击者识别中的表型偏见（将具有非洲特征的人视为罪犯的倾向）是否是由于对目击事件进行编码期间的刻板印象影响，未能使用审议过程来纠正对判断的刻板印象影响，或两者的结合。这项研究还将测试应用阵容理论背后的假设，该理论表明自动识别过程会导致准确的识别，而故意的过程会引入偏差。这些结果与刻板印象的双重过程理论相反，该理论预测表型偏见会自动影响判断，并且需要深思熟虑的过程来纠正刻板印象的偏见影响。该项目的进一步研究探讨了表型偏差与导致证人错误识别的因素之间的相互作用。该项目的去识别化数据将公开。因此，该项目将测试阵容的多个理论基础，以及表型偏差背后的潜在机制，这可能会损害目击者识别的准确性。