Encyclopedia of Psychology and Law

validation is currently under way using 18-month

recidivism data on 3,797 defendants.

Kirk R. Williams

See alsoForensic Assessment; Intimate Partner Violence;

Violence Risk Assessment

Further Readings

Campbell, J. C., O’Sullivan, C., Roehl, J., & Webster, D.

(2005). Intimate partner violence risk assessment

validation study: The RAVE study(Final report).

Washington DC: National Institute of Justice.

Kropp, P. R., & Hart, S. D. (2000). The Spousal Assault Risk

Assessment (SARA) guide: Reliability and validity in

adult male offenders. Law and Human Behavior, 24,

101–118.

Skilling, N. (2002). Validation study for the use of the

Domestic Violence Screening Instrument (DVSI) and the

Spousal Assault Risk Assessment (SARA) for evaluating

probation clients. Minneapolis, MN: Research and

Systems Technology, Department of Community

Corrections, Hennepin County.

Williams, K. R., & Houghton, A. B. (2004). Assessing the

risk of domestic violence re-offending: A validation study.

Law and Human Behavior, 28,437–455.

Williams, K. R., & Grant, S. R. (2000). Empirically

examining the risk of intimate partner violence: The

Revised Domestic Violence Screening Instrument

(DVSI-R). Public Health Reports, 121,400–408.

DOUBLE-BLINDLINEUP

ADMINISTRATION

A double-blind lineup refers to a lineup procedure in

which both the witness and the lineup administrator

are unaware of which lineup member is the suspect

under investigation. Scholars began recommending

this procedure, in contrast to the typical procedure in

which the lineup administrator knows which lineup

member is the suspect, because of concerns that a

nonblind administrator would unintentionally com-

municate to the witness the identity of the suspect,

increasing the rate of mistaken identifications when

the suspect is not the perpetrator. Laboratory research

suggests that the use of double-blind lineups may

decrease the rate of mistaken identifications, especially

when other lineup procedures lead to an increase in

identification rates.

Definition

When a photo or live lineup is administered to an eye-

witness, it is common for the police officer administer-

ing the lineup to be aware of the suspect’s identity. This

type of lineup procedure is referred to as a single-blind

lineup, because although the witness is blind to the sus-

pect’s identity, the administrator of the lineup is not.

Psycholegal researchers have expressed concern that

when lineups are implemented in this fashion, the

administrator may consciously or unconsciously emit

cues to the witness and influence the witness’s choice.

This possibility is problematic when the suspect in

question is actually innocent, as the witness could be

led to misidentify an innocent person. Therefore,

researchers have suggested that the police implement a

double-blind procedure, meaning that both the witness

and the police officer administering the lineup are

unaware of which lineup member is the suspect.

Origins of the Recommendation

for Double-Blind Lineups

In 1996, the American Psychology-Law Society

(AP-LS; Division 41 of the American Psychological

Association) selected a group of eyewitness experts to

review the scientific literature on eyewitnesses and

make recommendations regarding the best procedures

for constructing and conducting lineups and photo

spreads. In this paper, the authors argue that lineups

can be viewed as a research experiment in which the

lineup administrator is akin to the experimenter. In

this lineup-as-experiment analogy, the police have a

hypothesis that they are testing (i.e., that the suspect is

the perpetrator), and they create materials (lineups)

with which to test their hypothesis. The lineup admin-

istrator then collects data to test the hypothesis by

administering the lineup to the witness, finally inter-

preting the results obtained from the witness to see

whether they support the hypothesis that the suspect is

the perpetrator. This panel noted that as in other types

of experiments, lineups in which the lineup adminis-

trator knows which lineup member is the suspect pro-

duce a test of the hypothesis that is susceptible to bias.

Although these potential biases may not occur in a

conscious or deliberate manner, social-psychological

research suggests that when experimenters knew the

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