Police forces should issue comical caricatures of criminals they are hunting instead of standard photofits, according to a team of scientists who found that cartoon-like faces are better at jolting people’s memories.

A study at the University of Central Lancashire found that over-emphasising prominent features on people’s faces made them twice as easy to identify than before.

henri-goldsmann-caricature.jpg

Which would you remember? (NOT a criminal)

In tests, volunteers were asked to identify people from the standard photofit of their face and from their caricature. On average, a photofit face was correctly identified 20% of the time, compared with 40% for the caricature, according to a report in this month’s Visual Cognition journal.



  1. Sean says:

    Which one is the photo?

  2. edwinrogers says:

    The drawing looks more like the Prince of Wales.

  3. Phillep says:

    What a suspicious looking character.

    “GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY!”

  4. Angel H. Wong says:

    They definitively use cartoonist Rob Rogers.

    http://www.robrogers.com/cartoons/2007/images/100707%20Torture.gif


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