Crime victims as witnesses: Their accuracy and credibility

Because crimes are more likely to be reported to the police by victims than by bystanders and because there are no bystanders-eyewitnesses to many crimes, it is important to understand factors affecting victims' ability as eyewitnesses. This paper briefly reviews the general processes by which people encode, store and recall events and faces. It also discusses some of the empirical research in terms of the factors that have been found to affect bystanders' memory. Research on victims' ability as eyewitnesses is then reviewed, and a general framework for comparing the eyewitness accuracy of victims and bystanders is presented. In the final section, there is a discussion of factors that affect victims' credibility as witnesses.