Face recognition as a function of distance and illumination: A practical tool for use in the courtroom

Abstract

This paper describes a practical courtroom tool that provides insight in face recognition accuracy as a function of distance and illumination. Subjects were shown 3/4 target portraits with an exposition time of 12 seconds, immediately followed by a target-absent or target-present lineup of six full-face portraits. Subjects were asked to identify the target. Seven distances (3 to 40 meter) and nine illumination levels (0.3 to 3000 lux) were used which resulted in a 7?9 matrix, with in the cells a hit score and a false alarm score. From these rough data several other measures were derived, like d-prime, diagnostic value and some idealised scores. The scores represent the upper margins of recognition accuracy with the memory component reduced to a minimum. The results clearly indicate a systematic increase of recognition performance with decreasing distance and increasing illumination. The end result is a practical rule of thumb, the Rule of Fifteen: Even in ideal conditions the desired diagnostic value of 15 is reached at not more than 15 meters, not less than 15 lux.     

Politicising European security: from technocratic to contentious politics?

Security provision in and by the EU has become an issue of increasing public interest and controversy. There are diverse and growing demands and critiques from different political camps towards the EU while EU institutions, in turn, utilise their security function as a resource for authority construction and self-legitimation. More recently, European security has also become intertwined with contemporary “crises” that turned it into an arena for the negotiation of fundamental conflicts, often revolving around questions of identity and sovereignty. This paper argues that these developments represent a significant change of European security and its politics that existing approaches linking the field to depoliticisation cannot adequately capture. To fill this gap, this paper suggests applying a politicisation perspective that, so far, has focused on the European integration project as such or the “Eurozone crisis” to the purportedly special security field.     

Ironies of inclusion: social class and deinstitutionalization

This paper discusses changes in the social organization of mental institutionalization as they relate to developments in the wider social and economic environment. Despite dramatic changes in the system of inpatient psychiatric care during the last three decades, the historic division of labor between the private and the public system (with the latter treating the poor, the unemployed, and the nonwhite) has not ceased to exist. At the same time, under the influence of the postwar trend towards greater political integration of disadvantaged and marginal groups into society's central value systems, treatment of the mentally ill has become less segregated and more voluntary. An important implication of these two interacting trends--the changed legal position of the patient vis-à-vis the provider and the deteriorating economic position of the user of public psychiatric facilities--has been the exceeding irrelevance of one of the basic tenets of psychiatric care: that clinical treatment precedes social functioning. With two vignettes of chronic patients the article illustrates how symptoms and survival are fused in the contemporary, inclusionary system of care.     

Expert witness in international war crimes tribunals

Abstract

The author has served as an expert witness in eight different cases tried before war crimes tribunals, involving twelve accused. Only three of the twelve accused were convicted. Seven were acquitted and two cases are still pending. The general defense strategy in such cases is to admit the crimes, but to challenge the involvement or responsibility of the accused. Identity then becomes the main issue to be proven by the prosecution. From the verdicts it appears that problems of identification were a major reason for acquittal. A closer look at the cases demonstrates that these problems were entirely due to an astounding naivety of the various prosecutors with respect to identification issues. The identification procedures used by the investigators were violating even the basic principles developed in many years of research in the area of psychology and law. This is even more shocking when it is realized how important these trials are, not only for the accused, but also for the witnesses, the victims, their relatives, their communities, and for international justice.

Since 1987 I have been asked eight times to testify in war crimes trials. The venues were, in chronological order:

• The Special Court in Jerusalem for the trial of suspects accused of crimes in the Second World War – the case against John Demjanjuk.

• The Special Dutch Court for the trial of suspects accused of crimes against humanity in the Second World War – the case against Marinus De Rijke.

• The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY); five cases: against Du?ko Tadi? (IT-94-1), Vlatko Kupreskic (IT-95-16), Fatmir Limaj et al. (IT-03-66-T), Ramush Haradinaj et al. (IT-04-84), and Ljubisa Beara (IT-05-88-T).

• The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) – the case against Jérôme–Clement Bicamumpaka (ICTR 99-5-T).

In this paper I will describe some of my experiences, and try to formulate some lessons that I have learned.