The Need for Memory Experts in French Courts

Triers-of-facts sometimes face eyewitness or perpetrator memory issues in criminal cases. Their goal is therefore to evaluate the weight that should be given to those statements. The past 40 years of research about how memory works during a criminal event or in judicial contexts have widely documented how easily an eyewitness report may be biased and erroneous. For this reason, in several Western countries, legal and forensic psychologists and psychiatrists, namely memory experts, are called upon to help triers-of-fact to deal with sensitive memory issues. However, in France, this area of judicial expertise does not exist and recent survey data highlighted how little French psychology and psychiatry experts know about memory. This article therefore aims at describing the recent data and providing recommendations toward mental health practitioners and judges for quality improvement concerning expertise work about memory issues in judicial and criminal contexts.