CLPEX Chat Board

AUTUMN SEMINAR 2007 – FINGERPRINTS ON THE BRAIN
Presented by Dr. Itiel Dror and David Charlton
Saturday 10th November 2007 10am – 5 pm
Sedgley Park Training School, Manchester

This new event on The Fingerprint Society calendar has been established in response to a request by members for further workshops / seminars to be organized, in addition to those at its Annual Conference (2006 / 2007 Members Questionnaire).

The event will be open to members and non-members (subject to availability and approval by the organisers). Non-members would also have to pay an inflated fee in an attempt to encourage membership.

For more information visit :
http://www.fpsociety.org.uk/conference/ ... minar.html

This is a great topic for a workshop, and I for one am looking forward to attending.

I am not sure how much Dr. Dror's work has been discussed on this forum, or what conclusions have been made by the majority of members, but I am confident that nobody could deny that there is some sense in the findings.

My concerns lie where if all the research indicates that contextual information does significantly interfere with the decision making process, what will be the recommendations.... Here are my theories:

• All contextual information would be eliminated from comparisons - this could lead to a boring robotic method of carrying out comparisons, which in turn could lead to mistakes being made.

• Dr. Dror and his cognitive consultants devise a psychometric test that ensures only the most appropriate persons who can block out contextual information are employed by law enforcement agencies - at the moment LPE's / Fingerprint Examiners are regarded as anoraks. Imagine what a room full of these people would be like!!

As far as psychological influences are concerned. there are numerous:

CONTEXTUAL - e.g. an automated comparison has shown a possible match, that cannot be confidently validated on-screen due to "interference". The exhibits are retrieved so that a full manual comparison can be made. On examination of the exhibits you notice that the possible offender lives at the scene address. Now when you make the comparison, your subconscious tells you that each characteristic should be there and all of a sudden what appeared to be a blurry area in which you could not confidently make a comparison, now becomes that little bit clearer.

If the possible offender was a 95 year old woman who lives 70 miles from the scene then your subconscious would lead you to try to eliminate that person from making that print.

EMOTIONAL - e.g. you are involved in a high profile case from its start and have been included in meetings with the investigating officers and have become emotionally connected with the highs and lows, and twist and turns of the investigation.

The officers are convinced that they have found their guy and puts pressure on you to tie the person to the crime.

PERSONAL - we have all heard that a more senior expert or supervisor should not have identifications verified by less experienced officers or that close friends / family should be involved in the same identification process, due to issues of trust and loyalty.

I don't want to start any further controversy on this forum, but it does appear to have been demonstrated on this forum that some persons are willing to agree with an identification made by experts that they respect, trust and admire, even though they have not themselves seen the original exhibits.

I would be interested to hear views of other people on this forum.