Are Suspect Sketches Worthless?

Celeb_Composites

Mostly. According to Lillian Marx, "victims who assist in creating a composite sketch of their assailants are nearly 50 percent less likely to correctly identify a suspect later":

[T]he act of creating a composite sketch confuses the hell out of the victim. Your memory is actually very suggestible, thanks to a phenomenon called source amnesia, which basically means the brain remembers facts, but doesn't remember where we learned them. That means if the artist gets something wrong in the sketch (the suspect's nose is too big, or he has too many eyes), the victim literally starts to think that's what the suspect looks like. The brain doesn't remember if you first saw that feature in the real face or on the sketch. So the cops drag in a guy who looks like the inaccurate sketch and you say, "That's him!"

Operators were given photographs of various celebrities and attempted facial composites using a kit containing disparate facial features. The results are seen above. From left to right: Bill Cosby, Tom Cruise, Ronald Reagan, and Michael Jordan.