Helping police with their enquiries – exploring human memory
Posted on 11. May, 2010 by admin in Psychology, Science
A forensic psychologist from the University of Portsmouth is taking part in a groundbreaking new BBC series which examines our powers of recall as witnesses to violent crime.
Dr Becky Milne advised makers of Eyewitness, a three-part series on BBC 2 which began on Sunday evening, that examines how the human memory works. The basis of the programme is that many of us will be a witness to a violent crime in our lifetime but recalling the event to the police is not as easy as we think because our own memory plays tricks on us.
The series also demonstrates how police procedures are being improved through liaison with specialist academic researchers.
Dr Milne, who is the Director of the new Centre for Forensic Interviewing at the University’s Institute of Criminal Justice Studies, was one of the academic advisors on the series. She is a regular advisor to the police and specialises in training officers on interview technique and how to obtain the best information from eye-witnesses.
She said: “Research reveals that the process of interviewing a witness about their recollection requires specific techniques in itself which interviewing officers can learn. There are ways of asking questions which encourage witnesses to give more detail and allow the police to piece together what happened.
“Psychological research has provided the police with another set of tools to help them do their job.”
The three-part programme uses a combination of drama, secret filming, psychological tests and interviews to show the difference between what witnesses think happened and what actually took place.
Ten members of the public, who believe they are simply volunteering to take part in a memory research exercise, become bystanders to two violent mock crimes set up by the production team using actors and secret cameras to film proceedings. They must rely on their powers of recall to help Greater Manchester Police piece together events in the police investigation – and discover for themselves how unreliable their own memories can be.
Psychologists unpick the witnesses’ vulnerable areas of memory and expert interviewers outline the development of techniques used to draw out information in today’s sophisticated police interview.
Greater Manchester Police, which gave the series unprecedented access to its criminal investigation procedures, treats each crime scenario as if it were real, testing its own interview techniques and piecing together what officers think happened.
Dr Milne said: “In the last few years the police have embraced academic research after it has proved time and time again to be an effective tool in helping to them to constantly improve their techniques for fighting crime. The programme is a fascinating insight into how specialist expert research carried out by universities is having an effect in real life.”
The series, narrated by TV’s Philip Glennister, was produced in partnership with The Open University whose Dr Graham Pike is an eyewitness expert and was one of two other academic advisors to the series.
He said that eye witness identifications are a crucial factor in both securing convictions and overturning them, but that memories are incredibly fragile: “However fallible human memory is, it’s often the only thing police have to go on and many legal verdicts have been decided on the basis of witness testimony. But our recollection of what happened in the crime and who committed it are not as sound as you might think and in the past, eyewitness accounts have resulted in innocent people being jailed.”
Professor Martin Conway, a cognitive psychologist from the University of Leeds, was the third academic advisor on the series which continues next Sunday 25th April.
Eyewitness is part of the BBC’s focus on science this year. The first of three programmes aired on Sunday 18 April on BBC Two. You can watch it again at the BBC’s iPlayer http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00s6b06/Eyewitness_Episode_1/
Listen to an interview with Dr Becky Milne about techniques she has taught the police for getting the most out of eye-witnesses:
Find out more about your own capabilities with online tests and a mock-crime video and ID parade at www.open2.net/eyewitness.”
