Software designed to match mug shots with police sketches

Whenever a witness or victim is asked to identify a criminal, there’s always a chance for a slip up or inaccurate call. After all human beings are forgetful creatures, and especially after a stressful incident or when there’s a time period between the crime and the date of identification, details become hazy and sometimes forgotten. Well, over at the Michigan State University, they’ve developed a program to solve this problem. Instead of using people to point out perpetrators, a computer running the software can be used to match mug shots to police sketches. Since the software will be matching mug shots to sketches, it can access a larger database of photographs – many more criminals than a victim/witness can see in one day at a identification lineup, thus increasing the chances of a match. The machine still needs some development before it becomes good enough to base convictions on – its current accuracy is only 45%, but it is good enough to guide investigators to likely suspects. It looks like life is going to get a lot harder for criminals.

George Wong
Categories: Computers
Tags: police, software