The good, the bad and the ugly of eyewitness identification practice in police officers – a self-report survey study

ABSTRACT

Witness identification practice of the police plays a critical role in the criminal proceedings. The current study examines police officers’ knowledge regarding factors affecting witness memory as well as witness interview and identification practices in Taiwan, after relevant judicial reform had been implemented for more than a decade. A total of 499 police officers in Taiwan participated in the survey to report their knowledge and actual practice of eyewitness interview and identification. The findings revealed strengths as well as weaknesses in their current practice. More disconcertingly, most (87.8%) of them did not receive relevant training, and those who received training scored lower in both eyewitness knowledge and witness identification practice than those who received no training. These findings suggested that operations of eyewitness identification were not completely in line with recommended best practice outlined in recent Judicial Reform and that the current training need to be improved to increase its effectiveness.

KEYWORDS:

• Eyewitness identification
• witness interview
• police
• bias
• Judicial reform

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all the police officers who generously participated in this study despite their busy schedule and heavy workload. And the authors would like to thank the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan for the funding (grant number: MOST 105-2410-H-015-002) which made this research possible. The first author designed the study, analysed and interpreted the data, and wrote the manuscript. The second author designed the study, acquired funding, collected the data and assited in editing the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, CHS, upon reasonable request with the permission of National Police Agency Taiwan.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supportd by the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan [grant number MOST 105-2410-H-015-002].