I came across this article called, ‘why does the human brain create false memories? by the BBC news, within this article I came across a section called lost keys which talks about people actually being convicted of a crime due to them thinking something happened when it didn’t. It also mentions a project called the’ innocence project’ which states on their website they are a nation litigation and public policy organisation dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted individuals through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice’ This just amazes me that a false memory could easily put an innocent person away for a long time.
The article says –
‘Forensic technology has Led to many convictions being overturned. A project called The innocent project in the US campaign to overturn eyewitness misidentification and lists all the people who have subsequently been acquitted.
The project reports that there have been 311 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the US, which includes 18 people who were sentenced to death before DNA evidence was able to prove their innocence.
Christopher French of Goldsmiths University in London says there is still a lack of awareness of how unreliable human memory is, especially in the legal system.
“Although this is common knowledge within psychology and widely accepted by anybody who has studied the literature, it’s not widely known about in society more generally,” he says.
“There are still people who believe memory works like a video camera as well as people who accept the Freudian notion of repression – that when something terrible happens the memory is shoved down into the subconscious.”
But the evidence of repressed memories, he adds, is “very thin on the ground”.
links
http://www.innocenceproject.org/ (inncent project website)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24286258 (BBC article)
Sophie Fowkes / Photo & Video Art 