Abstract

JUAN, César San  and  OCARIZ, Estefanía. Are police line-ups reliable as evidence of perpetrator identification? A review of meta-analyses and experimental studies. Rev. Crim. [online]. 2023, vol.65, n.3, pp.137-148.  Epub Mar 10, 2024. ISSN 1794-3108.  https://doi.org/10.47741/17943108.516.

The line-up is a police investigative procedure aimed at identifying the perpetrator of a crime. It is a relatively common practice that can result in consolidating suspicions or ruling out lines of investigation. The identification parade is usually preceded by the exhibition of a photo album and it is also common to ask the same witness to make a description or sketch of the perpetrator. There are strong suspicions that the concatenation of these police identification steps undermines the effectiveness of the eyewitness statement in identifying the real culprit, if present at the line-up. There is also some controversy regarding the reliability of the identification parade, depending on the age of the witness, the number of people involved, the procedure for carrying it out, among others. In order to narrow down the empirical evidence on these issues, a review of meta-analytical studies and various experimental studies is presented, based on which it has been possible to identify the most appropriate procedures to optimise the effectiveness in the accuracy of eyewitness testimony in the context of a line-up.

Keywords : Suspect identification; witness; criminal investigation; police; Line-up.

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