Feature: Police Lineups

Americans who watch movies and popular police television shows may believe that all police lineups are the same. A crime witness looks at six or seven people lined up against a wall and picks out the criminal immediately.

While these simultaneous lineups are still common, some police departments now prefer sequential lineups, where a witness views one possible suspect at a time. Some memory experts believe that sequential lineups may be more reliable, forcing an eyewitness to compare each person to their original memory instead of comparing individuals in the group to each other and their memory.

The issue has become increasingly important because of exonerations (based on new DNA evidence) of persons who were wrongfully convicted. Most of these cases involved erroneous eyewitness identifications.

NIJ is sponsoring several studies—both in the laboratory, at Augsburg College in Minneapolis, and in the field at police stations—to help advance knowledge about the most effective ways to conduct lineups.

Read an article in the NIJ Journal about lineup research.