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6. What Must Be Done and How to Make It Happen
- NYU Press
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128 > 129 respects both the role and culture of law enforcement and what science has to offer? Fortunately, the scientific findings on eyewitness identification, suspect interrogation, and forensic work present us with not just criticism of the present but also guidance toward the future. Almost all of this work tells us not only what goes wrong when we use traditional methods but also how to do a more accurate job of finding the correct culprit, with lower risks of identifying the wrong person. Chapters 6 and 7 will give us a path that can enable us to persuade more of the dedicated professionals in law enforcement to join in these efforts to improve the system. What Must Be Done A Preliminary Word: A Modest Approach and a Modest Goal There already exist a large number of well-documented possibilities for reform of traditional investigative methods, all based on sound science. But not all of the alternatives appear among the proposals that follow. Two considerations animate the changes I believe we should seek now. First, we need to accept that all of these proposals for change become part of the highly contentious debate over science and law enforcement explored in the previous chapters. Many voices in the argument, including some of the loudest, do not accept that any need for change exists; they do not agree that we have a problem of wrongful convictions of any significant magnitude. Given this reality, a modest approach to change, one that may not attempt to fix all the problems we know about but that moves toward the strongest ideas around which we find the greatest consensus, seems right. The question at the top of this chapter—“What Must Be Done”—focuses the discussion , and forces us into the real world of making choices among alternatives. Reformers must confront the question of what they can realistically expect to obtain. The alternatives I espouse here reflect this realistic and practical point of view. They do not constitute a complete list of all the best practices one might adopt if given unlimited power to remake the world to the highest standard. Rather, they reflect a set of changes about which there exist both a strong scientific consensus and a budding acceptance in the professions of policing, prosecution, and the law as a whole. Second, the goal of the process is not perfection. No one can expect that police investigations will always get the right person, or that prosecutors will always convict the truly guilty party. Since human beings created and run the criminal justice system, it contains all of the usual human flaws and the shortcomings of all human institutions. Therefore, our goal should not be [44.200.26.112] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 13:42 GMT) 130 > 131 by social scientists, and the TWGEYEE handbook, put together by a group dominated by law enforcement professionals, is that most suggestions that appear in one document appear in the other as well. With that degree of consensus , we can feel comfortable beginning the process of reform with these changes. And since the United States Supreme Court passed up its opportunity for eyewitness identification reform in 2012, change from either source is more important now than ever. Recommendation 1: The person who conducts the identification procedure should not know which member of the lineup is the suspected culprit. In conducting behavioral experiments, scientists have long understood the experimenter -expectancy effect (chapter 2). Recall that this means that anytime a person conducting an experiment knows the correct or expected result, he or she may send subtle signals to the subject indicating the “right” choice, without any awareness that it is happening. This is particularly true when physical proximity between experimenter and subject allows for eye contact, visible facial expressions, and verbal exchanges.”6 Administering a lineup constitutes just such an interpersonal interaction. In the course of a traditional investigation, the officer or detective involved in the case helps assemble the lineup, puts the suspect among similar-looking “fillers,” and then brings the witness into the viewing room and tells the witness what to do. The witness and the officer usually stand near each other, close enough to talk, with their faces and gestures clearly visible to one another. This makes a traditional lineup a perfect example of what a sloppy scientific experimenter might do, and it subjects the identification procedure to the same danger that one would see in an experiment conducted this way: the witness may receive subtle...