Constructing facial composites: Increasing the forensic relevance of laboratory research

DOI

Witnesses to and victims of serious crime are often asked by the police to create a visual likeness of an offender using a computerised composite system. The witness provides a description and selects from a large database of examples the facial features that best match their memory of the offender. Good quality facial composites can provide investigative leads. However, laboratory research shows that participants generally produce composites bearing a poor resemblance to the target person, with composites created using traditional UK systems identified only about 20 per cent of the time under favourable conditions. Two simple techniques have been developed by the co-investigator to improve composite quality: introducing a 30 minute delay between the face description and composite construction; asking the witness to attribute personality characteristics to the target's face (eg, masculinity, pleasantness). This project will evaluate the effectiveness of these techniques in improving composite quality with relation to two variables of importance to real-world forensic settings: the delay between seeing a target face and constructing a composite; whether the witness knows (or does not know) to attend to the target's face. The results will indicate when the police should use these techniques with witnesses to improve composite quality.

Data from two large-scale experiments is provided. In total, 192 participants were recruited to construct composites of target faces unfamiliar to them. Composite quality was assessed by asking 110 participants familiar with the target identities to each attempt to name a subset of 12 composites. Naming responses were coded as correct for the target name (a score of 1) or otherwise (a score of 0) producing a binary dataset for each experiment.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-850883
Metadata Access https://datacatalogue.cessda.eu/oai-pmh/v0/oai?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_ddi25&identifier=4bee51a710082494f5f0cb2e3664c46c1b8883e193e2d2fc7601d02ab354b4fb
Provenance
Creator Brown, C, University of Leeds
Publisher UK Data Service
Publication Year 2013
Funding Reference Economic and Social Research Council
Rights Charity Brown, University of Leeds; The Data Collection is available for download to users registered with the UK Data Service.
OpenAccess true
Representation
Language English
Resource Type Numeric
Discipline Jurisprudence; Law; Psychology; Social and Behavioural Sciences
Spatial Coverage United Kingdom