Surprisingly enough, in England, screens for identity parades did not come in at all until the late s.

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A poke around the British Newspaper Archive (paywall, sorry) found this article from Nov , talking about the success of the £4,000 Merseyside Police had spent on "one of Britain's first two-way mirror systems" (presumably what we would call a one-way mirror), and this article from July where West Mercia Police would be "among the first forces in the country to introduce one-way vision screens" following "an experiment in which the screens were installed in some stations earlier this year". It's not quite clear when they became universal, but it suggests forces were starting to roll them out across their regions at that point.

There seem to have been other experiments at the same time; this July article notes the success of an experiment in secretly videoing a suspect who had refused to take part in an identity parade, and circulating that along with video of nine other men doing the same thing.

So, why had it changed? Following some high-profile mistaken identification cases, the Devlin Committee on Identification in Criminal Cases in looked into all forms of identification of suspects. They specifically considered one-way screens (para 5.55), which had been recommended by an earlier report but did not feel that "the problem of the nervous witness is grave enough to require this solution".

(The earlier report that recommended screens was the Thomson Committee on Criminal Procedure in Scotland, , Cmnd (in para 12.07); I haven't yet tracked down a copy of that to see what exactly it said, but the Devlin report suggests that they recommended something very much along the lines of the modern one-way screen system. It's unclear if these approaches were indeed adopted in Scotland prior to being adopted in England & Wales)

The Devlin report recommended giving the guidelines for identification parades statutory force, which happened with the Police and Criminal Evidence Act . This gave the Home Secretary powers to issue guidelines, and it is these new regulations which will presumably have established using screens, first as an experiment and then as a universal rule. This review outlines some post-Devlin changes, but focuses on video identification (authorised , common from , now pretty much ubiquitous) and does not say anything about why screens were adopted. I can't find anything specifically discussing it in Hansard, which is odd - it's the sort of thing you would expect to be announced there.

(A note on terms: identity or identification parade is the most common form in the UK, though the US "line-up" does also get used; they're the same thing. "Parade" is presumably from the military sense of assembling and mustering troops for a particular purpose - "sick parade", "pay parade", "church parade" - rather than implying a public event.)

Transparent Mirrors - Two-way and One-way Mirrors

Since the moment they first appeared in history, two-way mirrors managed quickly to become useful in many types of situations, ranging from surveillance to solving challenging puzzles that the only mix of transparent and reflective surfaces could achieve. The first mention of the two-way mirror discovery goes all the way back to the early 20th century when the subject of the Emperor of Russia Emil Bloch filed for a patent for 'transparent mirror' in Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S, where he lived at the time. His design of two-way mirror became the standard for almost all future models, enabling a thin layer of silver or aluminum to be reflective just like a regular glass, but also enabling back surface of the mirror to become transparent when the strong light was flashed toward it. Essentially, two-way mirrors function like a regular mirror in brightly lit rooms, but they allow clear viewing from the room that is sufficiently darkened. Some light from darkened room is penetrating through a mirror into the bright room, but the users in that room cannot perceive that because the reflection of the strong light in the mirror overwhelms the small amount of light that is passing through the mirror.

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There are two ways of detecting if some mirror is of two-way variety or not, but both of those tactics are not 100% accurate all the time. When putting your fingernail directly on the mirror, you can see if your reflection starts directly in the mirror surface or behind the thin layer of glass (small gap between your finger and reflection can be seen). If the reflection is immediate, then that is the most likely normal mirror. If reflection has a small gap, there is a chance that is a two-way mirror. The other tactic involves you cupping your eyes with both hands and closely examine the surface of a mirror. When most of the light from the room is eliminated by hands, the small amount of light that is passing through the window from the darkened room beyond should become visible.

Use case scenarios for two-way mirror are numerous, but most are closely used for observational purposes. Most notable uses for two-way mirrors are:

• Interrogation rooms ' Police use them regularly because this approach allows a lot of people to observe interrogation without being noticed. This includes potential witnesses who want their identity kept secret.
• Execution rooms ' Used so that prisoners who are about to be executed cannot see the audience in the adjoining room.
• Security areas in public areas ' High-risk public spaces such as airports, train stations, and others can sometimes hide security personnel that is observing the foot traffic behind the two-way mirrors.
• Various experimental research.
• Various scientific uses where two-way mirrors are used as laser 'beam splitters'.

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• Reality television ' Almost every mirror on reality television sets are two-way mirrors, with camera personal observing behind them.
• Train conductor rooms ' Some newer metro/subway trains hide their train conductor cockpits behind two-way mirrors.
• Security cameras
• Stage effects
• Low-emissivity windows
• Teleprompters

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