Software helps to spot criminals

Criminals are having a harder time hiding their faces, thanks to new software developed at Kent University that can help witnesses recreate and recognise suspects.

The software is already being used by approximately 15 police departments in the UK and by a half dozen European countries, including France and Switzerland. In field trials conducted by the Derbyshire police force, it led to twice as many identifications of suspects as traditional methods.

Law enforcement agencies around the world traditionally employ sketch artists, who piece together faces in a process similar to assembling a Mr Potato Head toy. The witness describes key features - such as hair length, nose size or sharpness of the chin - and the artist combines them to create a likeness. Some departments now have computer programs that follow the same approach as these artists, creating facial composites using databases of pre-drawn features.

The problem with this approach, said Kent University researcher Christopher Solomon, is that it doesn’t take into account how the memory actually works. ‘There’s quite a bit of research in the psychology field suggesting that we’re not so good at this, at recalling and describing a face,’ added Solomon.