ABSTRACT
Police composites are impressions of a suspect’s facial appearance derived from a witness description. Such disembodied faces stare out from the pages of our newspapers and television screens, coupled with a plea to members of the public to get in touch with the police if they believe they know someone or may have seen an individual bearing a resemblance to the composite. In the United Kingdom, just 10% of composite faces are released to the media. The remainder are used for internal police enquiries: around half are shown to informants familiar with the appearance of local criminals, and another third are used for house-to-house enquiries in the hope that they will cue a tentative identification (Kitson, Darnbrough, & Shields, 1978). Inevitably, many composites end up neglected in police files or thumbtacked to bulletin boards, awaiting the arrest of a suspect by other means. How effective are composite systems in practice? And can they be improved through psychological research?
