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44 Law & Hum. Behav. 1 (2020)

handle is hein.journals/lwhmbv44 and id is 1 raw text is: AMERICAN American PSYCHOLOGICAL Psychology-Law ASSOCIATION Society Law and Human Behavior © 2020 American Psychological Association ISSN: 0147-7307 2020, Vol. 44, No. 1, 1-2 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/hb0000362 INTRODUCTION The American Psychology-Law Society Scientific Review Paper on the Collection and Preservation of Eyewitness Identification Evidence Mark Costanzo Claremont McKenna College The lead article in this issue of Law and Human Behavior is Policy and Procedure Recommendations for the Collection and Preservation of Eyewitness Identification Evidence by Gary Wells and colleagues (2020). This special article is an official Scientific Review Paper (SRP) of the American Psychology-Law Society (AP-LS), Division 41 of the American Psychological Association (APA). This is only the third SRP that the AP-LS has approved in its 52-year history. SRPs are meant to objectively summarize the research literature in areas where there is a high degree of scientific clarity and consensus. A second essential goal of SRPs is to serve as science translation documents, providing guidelines and recommendations useful to police, lawyers, judges, legislators, and the public. This SRP admirably fulfills both goals. This SRP is the product of an extensive, multistep vetting process designed to ensure that it represents the best research, analysis, and recommendations the AP-LS can provide. The first SRP presenting recommendations for lineups and photospreads in gathering eyewitness evidence was published over two decades ago (Wells et al., 1998). The possibility of an updated SRP on eyewitness identification evidence was first discussed in 2016. The topic and proposed authors were approved by the AP-LS Execu- tive Committee in 2017. After the authors drafted the paper, it was posted on the AP-LS website for comments from society members. Next, the authors led a session at the American Psychological Association Convention in 2018 to provide members with an opportunity to publicly comment on the paper. The authors then made revisions based on feedback from members of AP-LS and the APA, and the revision was again posted on the AP-LS website for comment. A session presenting the SRP was held at the annual AP-LS conference in the spring of 2019. That session was well Mark Costanzo, Department of Psychological Science, Claremont McKenna College; Lora M. Levett, Department of Sociology and Crimi- nology & Law, University of Florida. This is an official statement of the American Psychology-Law Society, Division 41 of the American Psychological Association, and does not represent the position of the American Psychological Association or any of its other Divisions or subunits. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Lora M. Levett, Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law, University of Florida, P.O. Box 117330, Gainesville, FL 32611. E-mail: llevett@ufl.edu Lora M. Levett University of Florida attended and generated additional comments about the paper. Further changes were made to the paper in response to the feed- back from that session. The revised paper was sent out to three anonymous reviewers selected by the SRP Committee in consul- tation with the AP-LS Executive Committee. Once the authors incorporated feedback from the outside reviewers, they submitted the paper to Law and Human Behavior for possible publication. Four anonymous reviewers, an Associate Editor and the Editor- in-Chief provided feedback during the peer-review process, result- ing in two rounds of revisions and final acceptance for publication. In December 2019, the AP-LS Executive Committee unanimously approved the paper as an official SRP of the AP-LS. Through its endorsement, the AP-LS signaled that the SRP represents the consensus views of the membership, and that the AP-LS lends its authority to the paper's conclusions and recommendations. The SRP that follows is a result of this careful and deliberate process and provides an up-to-date review of the scientific litera- ture on the collection and preservation of eyewitness identification evidence. It extends and updates the recommendations of the very first SRP on the same topic (Wells et al., 1998). For two decades, that paper contributed to changes in the practice of collecting eyewitness identification evidence in the United States and abroad. It also became the model for the U.S. Department of Justice guidelines on collecting eyewitness identification evidence and was disseminated to law enforcement agencies throughout the country (Technical Working Group for Eyewitness Evidence, 1999). Many states used the paper to help create laws mandating science-based procedures for collecting eyewitness identification evidence, and the paper served as the basis for workshops, educa- tional seminars, trainings, expert testimony, and court decisions. The four recommendations made in the original paper by Wells and colleagues (1998) are retained in the new SRP. In addition, scientific progress made over the past two decades compelled the authors to add five new recommendations. The new recommenda- tions for best practices concern prelineup interviews of witnesses, the bases on which an officer should conduct a lineup, video- recording of lineup procedures, and the avoidance of biasing procedures (e.g., repeated lineups with the same witness and suspect). Eyewitness identification is especially vulnerable to error if law enforcement uses poor procedures to collect and test the evidence. The memory distortions caused by flawed procedures cannot be corrected by later using best practices. As a result, it is

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