Scottish Criminal Justice
Scottish criminal justice is a very complicated are of study. There
are many different topics of thought that surround the Scottish
criminal justice system, in terms of both physical and mental areas.
The criminal justice system stems out into a number of different other
subject areas mainly because criminal justice affects so many
different fields in society. It’s not just simply about police
arresting criminals, the accused going to court and ending up the
criminal goes to prison. There are many other extending factors
connected with the process. There are many different officials
involved each putting input into different areas of the process. As
mentioned it is not just the police courts involved in the process but
other types of people are influential in making the system work.
Psychologists are an integral part on many different levels throughout
the criminal process. They help people understand why a crime was
committed and help other authorities with the convictions of accused
people. There are number of things that psychologist can do to help in
the conviction for example criminal profiling can be very useful when
trying to catch a person. Also psychologists are used for research
methods, trying to establish how important different aspects are. Eye
witness testimony is one of the areas that psychologists are very
interested in. Important areas that are considered are characteristics
of the witness and accused. Also memory and perception are major
factors when evaluating eye witness testimony.
The psychologists, as mentioned, take into account, when evaluating
eye witness testimonies various cha...
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...to what the witness can remember about the incident. This could be
using the short term memory for remembering a car registration plate
and giving that information to attending police officers. It could
also relate to the long term memory where a witness would remember
aspects of a criminal incident weeks, months or even years after it
occurred. All in all eye witness testimonies can be a very important
topic to the Scottish Criminal Justice system.
Bibliography
Brewer, K. 2000 Psychology and Crime. Oxford: Heinemann.
Duff, P & Hutton, N.1999 Criminal Justice in Scotland. Aldershot :
Dartmouth Publishing company ltd.
Feldman, P. 1993 The Psychology Of Crime. Cambridge: Press Syndicate
of the University of Cambridge.
McGuire, J. 2004 Understanding Psychology and Crime. Berkshire: Open
University Press.
Memory is not reliable; memory can be altered and adjusted. Memory is stored in the brain just like files stored in a cabinet, you store it, save it and then later on retrieve and sometimes even alter and return it. In doing so that changes the original data that was first stored. Over time memory fades and becomes distorted, trauma and other events in life can cause the way we store memory to become faulty. So when focusing on eyewitnesses, sometimes our memory will not relay correct information due to different cues, questioning, and trauma and so forth, which makes eyewitness even harder to rely on. Yet it is still applied in the criminal justice system.
Eyewitness testimony plays a crucial role in criminal investigations. Thus, it is important to know how to eliminate factors that can negatively impact eyewitnesses’ recall ability. The result of eyewitness misidentification can lead to numerous inaccurate and wrongful convictions. One study suggests that more than 75,000 people a year become criminal defendants on the basis of eyewitness identifications (Schechel, O'Toole, Easterly, & Loftus, 2006, p.178). Another study has shown that approximately 100 people who were convicted have been exonerated by forensic evidence. Moreover, 75% of these people were known to be victims of mistaken identification. The known DNA exoneration cases are just a fragment of the innocent people who have been convicted based on mistaken eyewitness identification evidence (Wells & Olson, 2003).
Eyewitness identification and testimony play a huge role in the criminal justice system today, but skepticism of eyewitnesses has been growing. Forensic evidence has been used to undermine the reliability of eyewitness testimony, and the leading cause of false convictions in the United States is due to misidentifications by eyewitnesses. The role of eyewitness testimony in producing false confessions and the factors that contribute to the unreliability of these eyewitness testimonies are sending innocent people to prison, and changes are being made in order to reform these faulty identification procedures.
Elizabeth Loftus, is a psychologist, mainly concerned with how subsequent information can affect an eyewitness’s testimony. Loftus has focused on misleading information in both the difference in wording of questions and how these questions can influence eyewitness testimony. This research is important because frequently, eyewitness testimony is a crucial element in criminal proceedings. Throughout Loftus’s career she has found a witness’s memory is highly flexible and subject to being influenced. The classic study by Loftus and Palmer (1974), illustrates that eyewitness testimony can be influenced by leading questions and ultimately proved unreliable.
The justice system depends on eyewitness evidence to convict offenders. Eyewitness is a difficult task to achieve in the justice system. According to Wise, Dauphinais, & Safer (2007), in 2002 one million offenders were convicted as felons in America. Out of those one million offenders, 5000 of them were innocent in 2002 (Dauphinais, 2007). The Ohio Criminal Justice survey states that 1 out of 200 felony criminal cases is a wrongful conviction (Dauphinais et al., 2007). According to Dauphinais et al., (2007), Dripps said that eyewitness error is a huge factor in cases of wrong convictions. A study conducted in 1987 indicated that in roughly 80,000 criminal cases, eyewitness error was the only sole evidence against the defendant
...expert testimony in assessing the reliability of disputed confessions. The reason people make false confessions is typically due to a combination of factors such as psychological vulnerabilities, nature of the custodial confinement and the police interviewing tactics. Standardized psychological tests have been devised in order to assess personality factors such as suggestibility and compliance that render some people more vulnerable than others but these should never bee looked at in isolation. Studies indicate that reported cases are only the ‘tip of the iceberg’. It appears that young people are particularly vulnerable and often make false confessions in order to protect others. It is not only people with learning disability or major mental illness´ that are susceptible to make false confessions; depending on the context, anybody can.
There has been considerable debate worldwide, regarding the accuracy of eyewitness testimony in the criminal justice system. Particularly, arguments have surrounded wrongful convictions that have resulted from incorrect eyewitness evidence (Areh, 2011; Howitt, 2012; Nelson, Laney, Bowman-Fowler, Knowles, Davis & Loftus, 2011). The purpose of this essay is to consider psychological research about the accuracy of eyewitness testimony and its placement in the criminal justice system. Firstly, this essay will define how eyewitnesses and their testimonies are used within the criminal justice system and the current debate surrounding its usage. Secondly, the impact of post-identification feedback will be used to show the affect on the confidence of a witness. Thirdly, studies around gender related differences will show how a witnesses gender can affect memory recall and accuracy. Fourthly, empirical studies will be used to highlight how a psychological experience called change blindness can cause mistakes in eyewitness identification. Finally, the effect of cross-examination will be used to explore the impact on eyewitness accuracy. It will be argued, that eyewitness testimony is not accurate and highly subjective, therefore, the criminal justice system must reduce the impact that eyewitness testimony is allowed to have. Developing better policies and procedures to avoid wrongful convictions by misled judges and jury members can do this.
In the court of law, eyewitnesses are expected to present evidence based upon information they acquired visually. However, due to memory processing, presenting this information accurately is not always possible. This paper will discuss the reliability of eyewitness testimony, its use in a relevant court case, and how the reasonable person standard relates to eyewitness testimony.
This paper will consider eye witness testimony and its place in convicting accused criminals. Psychology online (2013) defines “eye witness testimony” as a statement from a person who has witnessed a crime, and is capable of communicating what they have seen, to a court of law under oath. Eye witness testimonies are used to convict accused criminals due to the first hand nature of the eye witnesses’ observations. There are however many faults within this system of identification. Characteristics of the crime is the first issue that will be discussed in this paper, and the flaws that have been identified. The second issue to be discussed will be the stress impact and the inability to correctly identify the accused in a violent or weapon focused crime. The third issue to be discussed is inter racial identification and the problems faced when this becomes a prominent issue. The fourth issue will be time lapse, meaning, the time between the crime and the eye witness making a statement and how the memory can be misconstrued in this time frame. To follow this will be the issue of how much trust jurors-who have no legal training-put on to the eye witness testimony, which may be faltered. This paper references the works of primarily Wells and Olsen (2003) and Rodin (1987) and Schmechel et al. (2006) it will be argued that eye witness testimony is not always accurate, due to many features; inter racial identification, characteristics of the crime, response latency, and line up procedures therefore this paper will confirm that eyewitness testimonies should not be utilised in the criminal ju...
Towl, Graham J. "Eyewitness Testimony." Dictionary of Forensic Psychology. Cullompton, Devon, UK: Willan, 2008. N. pag. Credo Reference. Web. 18 Nov. 2013.
The social need for Forensic Psychology arose from the need for expert testimony in a court of law. After Stern’s discoveries, psychologists began appearing more and more often in courts (Tartakovsky, 2011).
Have you ever been an eyewitness at the scene of a crime? If you were, do you think that you would be able to accurately describe, in precise detail, everything that happened and remember distinct features of the suspect? Many people believe that yes they would be able to remember anything from the events that would happen and the different features of the suspect. Some people, in fact, are so sure of themselves after witnessing an event such as this that they are able to testify that what they think they saw was indeed what they saw. However, using an eyewitness as a source of evidence can be risky and is rarely 100% accurate. This can be proven by the theory of the possibility of false memory formation and the question of whether or not a memory can lie.
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