The line-up is a police investigative procedure aimed at identifying the perpetrator of a crime. It is a relatively common practice that can result in consolidating suspicions or ruling out lines of investigation. The identification parade is usually preceded by the exhibition of a photo album and it is also common to ask the same witness to make a description or sketch of the perpetrator. There are strong suspicions that the concatenation of these police identification steps undermines the effectiveness of the eyewitness statement in identifying the real culprit, if present at the line-up. There is also some controversy regarding the reliability of the identification parade, depending on the age of the witness, the number of people involved, the procedure for carrying it out, among others. In order to narrow down the empirical evidence on these issues, a review of meta-analytical studies and various experimental studies is presented, based on which it has been possible to identify the most appropriate procedures to optimise the effectiveness in the accuracy of eyewitness testimony in the context of a line-up.

This paper shows, on the one hand, the outcomes of an investigation in which the records of decisions made in special courts for young offenders in San Sebastián, Vitoria and Bilbao (Comunidad Autónoma Vasca, Spain) in 2003 are analyzed. From 2003 to 2007 those young drug consumers, who entered again in contact with the juvenile justice system, were observed. Such records exhibit legal, penal, and psychosocial variables. On the other hand, this paper shows two differentiated studies: the first corresponds to the profile of young drug-consumer offenders, a study in which particular groups of foreign non-accompanied young offenders are mentioned; the second identifies differences between drug consumer and non-consumer young offenders. The link of the offense with the consumption of nocive substances is analyzed, including the differential factor that leads to alcohol consumption to, finally, suggest a discussion regarding the challenges this problem may bring about.