Confirmation Bias in Criminal Cases

Auteur
Moa Lidén is a Post Doc Researcher, funded by The Swedish Research Council and Ragnar Söderberg Foundation, at the Department of Security and Crime Science, University College London and the Law Faculty, Uppsala University. She holds a dual degree in Law and Psychology. Her PhD thesis was about confirmation bias primarily in the Swedish context, evaluating the prevalence of this bias as well as potential debiasing techniques in Swedish police officers, prosecutors and judges. She defended her thesis in Contemporary Jurisprudence in 2018 at the Law Faculty, Uppsala University. Since then she has been focusing on her post doc project "Reliability and Biasability of Criminal Evidence" which addresses human sources of error, including bias, in multiple types of criminal evidence.

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Confirmation Bias in Criminal Cases takes a multi-disciplinary approach to assessing confirmation bias among criminal justice practitioners, combining criminal law, psychology, criminology, medicine, and anthropology. The book analyses case studies from international jurisdictions and utilizes a research-based approach to confirmation bias.

Résumé
In criminal cases, practitioners such as police officers, crime scene investigators, pathologists, prosecutors, and judges are expected to make decisions that are objective and impartial. However, research since the 1960's into so-called confirmation bias provides persuasive scientific evidence that humans are unable to do so. As flawed investigations and proceedings come to light, the importance of undertaking proper bias mitigation measures is clear. Confirmation Bias in Criminal Cases takes a multi-disciplinary approach to a complex, real-world issue. It lays out the chronology of criminal investigations and proceedings, and assesses how bias plays a role in each stage. It also offers research-based strategies to combat bias, such as independent review, contextual information management, linear sequential unmasking, and structured evaluations of the evidence. This book is vital reading for anyone involved in the criminal justice system. It not only gives a holistic view of the human element of confirmation bias but it also offers strategies for how to address it.