By Rachel Greenspan, Adele Quigley-McBride, Marissa Bluestine, Brandon L. Garrett

Decades of research have explored factors related to eyewitness misidentifications and recommended procedures to maximize identification accuracy. In the current study, we explore whether and how this research has actually been adopted into the formal, written policies of police agencies by evaluating eyewitness identification policies used across all Pennsylvania police agencies. Pennsylvania has a particularly large number of police agencies but no statewide mandates concerning best practices for eyewitness identifications in law or judicial ruling, permitting an examination of how police agencies choose to voluntarily implement eyewitness science in policy. We submitted public records requests to all police agencies in Pennsylvania (N = 1,140)-the most comprehensive study of this kind to date-and received a response rate of over 99%. Nearly two-thirds of agencies did not have a written eyewitness identification policy. Among agencies with a written policy, the content of their policies varied substantially. On average, agencies with a policy incorporated five of the eight recommended procedures studied here (Wells et al., 2020). Though many agencies with a policy had topics relevant to these key evidence-based practices, these policies often failed to incorporate central aspects of these scientific recommendations and most failed to require their use. We discuss the implications of these results for police policy and practice and for how scientific research is translated to criminal justice practitioners.

Duke Law School Public Law & Legal Theory Series No. 2024-63, 56p.