Flawed identifications are responsible for many wrongful convictions. Why What should be done - Essay Example

Flawed Identifications Flawed identification whereby witness makes wrongful face identification of an individual purported to participate in a given crime have led to wrongful convictions of innocent people. Flawed identification has sent very innocent persons to jail while freeing the true criminals. In order to ensure that justice prevails in the criminal justice system, it is critical for justice practitioners to model and adopt newer and reliable systems of identifying and perhaps reconfirming suspects pointed by eye witnesses.

Following the above observations, it is worth acknowledging the efforts exerted by organizations like the Innocence Project and the Innocence Commission of Florida that review convictions to ensure rightful castigation of the real suspects while freeing the innocent groups. Innocence Project and Innocence Commission of Florida also advocate for payment and compensation of the wrong convicts among realization of the mistakes. The value of such like compensations depends on the damage caused to the innocent convict and the length of time spent in prison.

There are many reasons that explains flawed identification that eventually lead to false testimony against a suspect. The first reasons rely on the short memory of human beings and poor attention abated to transpiring criminal activities. This kind of confusion is prevalent when a witness is presented with two suspects; with one white and the other black. In most cases, individual witness will not be able to differentiate whether the main criminal was black or white in color perhaps due to poor attention and concentration as at the time of the crime.

In some cases police officers patrol and make arrests after criminal offences and perhaps take photos of the suspects, release the individual suspects and presents witnesses with various photos to identify the actual perpetrators. Due to the length of time lapse after the crime, witnesses’ memory may have faded away and may not make true identification of the suspect but may only desperately point at the suspect with suspicious face. The above descriptions narrow down to the theory of own-race bias effect.

According to the theory, human beings encounter difficulty in identifying and recognizing individuals from different races and ethnic groups. The theory portends that human beings can make accurate facial identification and recognition when it comes to differentiating people of their own race and ethic divisions. The demises attached to the flawed identification of criminals make it necessary for the practitioners in the justice department to identify proper ways of validating testimonies and making rightful convictions.

One step so far made in the struggle and requires improvement includes implementation of honor classes by universities to enable law students work with organizations like Innocence Project to facilitate rightful conviction and freeing of innocent people. Another technique that is in practice and requires further integration is the DNA technology. Since the invention of the DNA technology in exercising criminal justice, the cases of flawed identification have reduced and are deemed to reduce further with improvement of this technology (Munday 553).

In addition, institutions concerned with ensuring criminal justice should create and embrace independent crime examiners to help in conducting line-ups of suspected criminals to identify the real criminal. Moreover, criminal justice departments also need to adopt the use of computerized facial mapping and recognition technology. In order to ensure accuracy of facial mapping and recognition technologies, it is important for department of crime justice to advocate for installation of street security cameras to help capture faces and characteristics of potential criminals.

After capturing of the images of the crime suspects in the crime scene and making arrests, suspect’s face can be mapped and compared with the image captured and stored in the computer (Munday 558). This will produce reliable results that will help in avoiding wrongful convictions. Work citedMunday, Roderick. Evidence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Print.