Criminology

Different techniques used today in eye witness identification by law enforcement
There are various methods that can be used to make conclusions whether the person suspected to be the culprit really is the culprit. One of these methods is the relative judgment process. In this method, the suspected person together with the culprits all line up and the witness gets to have a clear look at them, trying to identify the culprit from memory. There is a huge chance of the witness trying to compare all the persons present in the line-up and identify the person who seems to be the closest match of the culprit in memory. If the culprit is on the line up, the witness will identify himher.
The other method is the absolute judgment process. The witness is supposed to compare each of the lined-up persons with the person in memory and use some conditions to determine whether the person matches the culprit or not.

In the relative judgment process, a problem occurs when the suspect is not lined-up with the fillers, because the witness will still identify the person who best resembles the culprit in memory. To adjust this, various methods are used.  One is the removal without replacement method. In this method, a line up is presented with the suspect present and then repeated with the suspect absent, but to different set of witnesses. The percentage of witnesses who conclude with he is none of the above in the culprit-absent line up should be equal to the percentage of the witnesses who reply with none of the above in the culprit-present line up and those who identified the culprit.

In dual line ups, the witnesses are provided with a blank line up first, to identify remove those that have the tendency of merely doing relative judgment. That is, selecting a culprit even when the culprit is not present because they have the temptation of choosing the best fitting figure. A blank line up is distinct because it contains no suspect at all while a culprit-absent line-up contains a suspect who is not a culprit. The blank line-up can therefore be effective in putting aside the witnesses who might not be helpful at all in the identification process. Research shows that the witnesses who pick on a person from a blank line-up are more likely to make an error in identification than those that did not pick on a suspect and those that are not involved in the first stage of the dual exercise (Gary et al.).

The other useful method is the image strips. The image of the suspects and fillers are presented to the witness for identification. Just like the line-ups, the witness is asked to identify the culprit from the comparison of the images and the visual in memory.

Video identification has also been investigated as a possible means of aiding in eyewitness identification or using live models. Even in situations where still images were captured, technology can be used to transform the images to video. As of February 2006, this method was in discussion for application in the UK (Novartis Foundation, 2006).  The use of video encourages the utilization of footages possibly captured in CCTVs on the streets and shops or residential buildings.

Strengths and weaknesses of various procedures
The relative identification process in line-ups has many weaknesses than strengths. First, there is the chance of the witness just picking the best resembling suspect to the culprit in memory. Then, the fact that the witness might not be told that the culprit might be absent from the line-up makes himher entirely rely on relative identification. Another problem is that the likeness of the fillers in the line-up affects the witnesses confidence that the suspect is the culprit. In essence, the innocent persons description closely fit the culprits description to the witnesss view, with reduced likeness of the fillers to the culprit. The confidence increases with the deviation of fillers likeness to the culprit. This means that the choice of fillers becomes important and hence complicates the procedure.

The dual line up method has the advantage of first removing the witnesses who would obviously provide false identification. However, the method does not increase the frequency of correct identification but just reduces the cases of false identification. It does not go beyond what relative identification can provide even after removing the obviously wrong cases.

Reasons for misidentification
While an eye witnesss confidence in matching of the culprit with the person charged in court can result from purely memory without external influence, it is possible that the belief is caused by confidence malleability the tendency of a persons confidence to increase in the identification as a result of events that occur after the identification (Gary et al., 1998). Another reason would be that for a line-up, the witness will obviously be looking for the person in the line-up who best resembles the culprit and from relative judgment process, there will always be a person identified regardless of whether the suspect poses in the line-up or not (Gary et al., 1998). While eyewitness is a practical approach to identifying a culprit from a range of suspects, it cannot be compared to scientific experiments that has basis of ruling out interpretation of results by chance, by using huge numbers in tests, because mostly the police will have a few witnesses or just one witness and cannot alter this number (The Justice Project, 2005).

A very likely reason for misidentification could be controlled witnessing. This is especially common when the witness is currently facing a conviction or in jail. The promise for release among other favors can lead to false identifications and testimonies. The witness could also be bribed with money or have an ill will with the suspected person. When these outside controlling factors are present and not mentioned to the team in charge of investigations, the whole witnessing process is compromised without their knowledge. Sometimes the police performing the interviews in line-ups and photo strips may knowingly or unknowingly volunteer information by giving hints and suggestions to the witness. An example case would be a case where one of the photographs presented is marked to be for a suspect while the others are unmarked because they are fillers. The witness may develop confidence in that photo owing to the identification as a suspect.

A problem may be created by what the police may demand from the memory of the witness in form of details while trying to identify a person. This is because the accuracy of memory may be changed by the amount of details required of it. Psychologically, the brain memory is less accurate when it is required to reconstruct an event than when required to just recognize it (Moses R., 2001). This could lead to dismissal of a true identification due to lack of the witness ability to describe the events or physique of the culprit word for word.

Improvements on the methods
In procedures of eyewitness identification, the processes followed should be closely guided by professionals from important scientific fields like psychology in order to completely avoid the chance of error creation out of unintentional interference of the witnesses decision. In conducting identification procedures, combination of various methods, although time consuming and demanding, could lead to better results and more informed decisions by the police and investigators.

The use of technology to help in narrowing down the range of suspects in methods like video and image processing could help create and imitate varying situations of the scene of crime to try and determine the accuracy of the witnesss memory past standard ways like photo strips and experimental line-ups.

The application of standard procedures in all eyewitness identification cases will help streamline the justice system. The fact that in the USA, photo strips are mostly used to identify culprits, combined with scientific tests like microscopic fitting of hair and tissue dents has led to many people being falsely convicted.

The eyewitness identification process depends completely on the memory of the witness and on scientific and psychological views, the memory is a resource that should be treated with the same scientific measures and importance of research as the procedures of dealing with physical evidence. It should be comparable to DNA and microscopic tests in form of research and scientific methodologies involved.

Conclusions
Many innocent people have been convicted of crimes they did not commit because of misidentification. In the USA, there are various initiatives that are acting to help solve such cases, like the Midwestern Innocent Project (MIP). According to this initiative, misidentification through eye-witnessing has caused over 75 of the wrong convictions, later overturned through DNA evidence. The damages caused are overwhelming with no proper way of completely compensating the victims. The lives spent in jail for wrong convictions are not redeemable.