Obtaining evidence from child witnesses: the advantage of VIPER parades.

Abstract

In the UK there have been an increasing number of children being asked to give evidence as witnesses in criminal cases and view video lineups to identify perpetrators, however little research has investigated how well children perform using this type of identification procedure. In this study children aged 6-8 and 13-14 years witnessed a staged event where an unfamiliar man interrupted a classroom or assembly and several days later were asked to identify the man from either a video or photographic lineup. For some lineups the target was present (target present) whereas for others the target was not (target absent). The results found an advantage for the target absent video lineups over the photographic lineups, but only for adolescents