COGNITIVE- Key Question

Question 1

Eye witness testimony

Answer 1

Evidence given (under oath in a court of law) by an individual who claims to have witnessed the facts under dispute

Question 2

Witness testimony

Answer 2

Written or oral statement given by an individual who has experienced an incident- collected during criminal investigation; interviews, facial composites, and identity parades

Question 3

Interviews

Answer 3

Include witness statements that cab be taken at the scene directly after an incident or elsewhere at another time

Question 4

Facial Composites

Answer 4

Include artist impressions and computer composites- either drawn from a description or taken from CCTV

Question 5

Identity Paraded

Answer 5

Witnesses are given a folder of photographs of individuals who match the description of the culprit and are asked to decide which is the criminal

Question 6

% of exonerated cases in the USA involve eye-witness misidentification

Answer 6

69%

Question 7

What impact does inaccurate eye-witness misidentification have on police investigations?

Answer 7

Critical time is lost for the police looking for the real criminal/perpetrator due to being redirected to building a case against an innocent person
-Costs a lot, wastes time
-Loss of public trust

Question 8

What percentage if false convictions are caused by inaccurate eye-witness statements in the UK?

Answer 8

75%

Question 9

What percentage of perpetrators of wrongful conviction go on to reoffend?

Answer 9

48%

Question 10

What problems do wrongful convictions cause for society?

Answer 10

-Individuals become at risk of discrimination/relationship damage/poor mental health as a result of societal expectation

Question 11

What problems do wrongful convictions cause for the country’s police and legal systems?

Answer 11

-Costly for the justice system (from £35k up to £1 million in compensation)
-Public loss of faith; leading some to commit more crime under the impression that they could easily be misidentified

Question 12

Economic costs of wrongful convictions

Answer 12

From £35k up to £1 million in compensation

Question 13

3 proposals that the Home Office suggested to reduce the risk of prosecution based on wrongful convictions

Answer 13

1.Jury should be directed as a matter of law not to convict without corroboration
2.That a jury should be specially warned of the danger of convicting without corroboration
3.That the identification of an accused while he is in the dock should be inadmissible unless by a witness who has previously identified him under controlled conditions (eg. Such as an identification parade)

Question 14

Multi-Store Model of Memory (Evaluation of KQ)

Answer 14

-If an eyewitness doesn’t pay attention to the crime as it occurs, then information is unlikely to transfer from the Sensory Register to the Short-Term Memory
-And if not rehearsed while in the Short-Term, information is unlikely to transfer to the Long-Term, rising the eyewitness missing/losing some details
-Accuracy can be increased by better victim support that encourages the rehearsal of their recall of the event

Question 15

Working Memory Model (Evaluation of KQ)

Answer 15

-The WMM could become overloaded if the event occurs too quickly: Unable to remember everything seen, Only part of the event is remembered while other (potentially crucial details are forgotten)
-Information processing speed differs from person to person- not everyone will remember the same thing from the crime
-Impact can be reduced by asking as many eyewitnesses as possible

Question 16

Tulving’s Theory of Long-Term Memory (Evaluation of KQ)

Answer 16

-Episodic recall is reliant on contextual cues which can be lacking in the environments that eyewitnesses are typically questioned in
-May be an inaccurate recall of the event, reconstructed by information in schema
-Impact can be reduced by asking eyewitnesses at the scene (with all environmental contextual cues around), or asking questions requiring context

Question 17

Reconstructive Memory & Schema Theory (Evaluation of KQ)

Answer 17

-Memory recall is never an exact replica, but a reconstruction using fragmented information; can never be truly accurate
-Can CONFABULATE with information taken from their schema
-RATIONALISE things to help make sense of things, to be consistent with schema
-Omit details that may seem unimportant
Impact can be reduced

Question 18

Cohen: Cross-Race Identification Bias (1966)

Answer 18

-Faces aren’t seen in isolation, but as a part of events and individual schema/social norms/values
-Far easier to identify & differentiate between people of the same race
-Difficult to recognise individuals outside of the contexts in which you usually interact with them