Essay On Eyewitnesses

INTRODUCTION

Obtaining a detailed account of a crime is often a challenge for the police and most of the time it relies heavily on the collecting of physical evidence and also the questioning of eyewitnesses. All information is integral for the police in their direction of investigation, therefore it is important to understand the types of information and what it does to help with solving the case. The different types of information can be gathered from victims, witnesses, offenders and form of objects such as, forensic samples, audio and video recordings and documents (Stelfox, 2012: 86). Whilst physical evidence are usally being further analysed before elucidating more about a crime, eyewitnesses are often the next important source for enquiring more leads to further investigation. In absence to definitive proof, eyewitnesses’ accounts often act as vital evidence to the police and judges in their decision to prosecute a suspect.

Eyewitnesses’ memories which constitute knowledge of the crime could be distorted or forgotten if is not retrieved at the right time and with appropriate methods (Stelfox, 2012: 90). As much as the

Thus, preserving crime scene evidence is often one of the first ‘fast- track’ action which the police would normally perform straight after the crime unless, there is an injured victim, as then that would be a much critical task for the police, as preserving life means securing important eyewitnesses. In good practice, the police usually access and collect as much information as possible right after the incident, which is also referred to the ‘golden hour’. This is to ensure that valuable evidence is collected with minimum chances of being tampered or destroyed (Stelfox, 2012: 152), in particularly forensic samples, which are prone to contamination when the crime scene is at outdoor (UNODC, 2009: