Capturing the scene: Efficacy test of the re-enactment investigative instruction
Résumé
Purpose – As eyewitnesses provide the most valuable information for criminal investigations, it is important
to further develop and test techniques for collecting eyewitness testimony so that they meet the major
objective of a police interview: obtaining details pertaining to criminal actions. The purpose of this paper is to
test a new instruction – the re-enactment investigative instruction – formulated to collect the most
fine-grained details of a criminal event as accurately as possible. It leads the interviewee to decompose all
directly recollected actions into the most minimal actions so that the event can be accurately re-enacted.
Design/methodology/approach – In all, 40 participants individually viewed a video depicting a robbery, were
randomly assigned to a re-enactment or structured interview (SI) group and then interviewed face-to-face. Each
interview was comprised of two free recall phases and a questioning phase. Manipulation of the re-enactment
instruction took place in the second free recall phase of the re-enactment interviews (RIs).
Findings – The RI elicited more correct information compared to the SI (d¼1.14), and slightly but not
significantly less incorrect information (d¼0.09). Participants in the RI condition reported significantly more
details pertaining to general and specific actions.
Practical implications – The re-enactment instruction shows the potential to increase witness recall in a
way that promotes recall of both additional correct information and investigative-relevant information.
Originality/value – The instruction provides witnesses a retrieval strategy that facilitates overcoming both
the gap between memory availability and accessibility and the gap between memory availability and output
regulation, eliciting more details with no significant increase of errors.