Abstract
A study is described that involves enhancing the scientific underpinnings of forensic handwriting analysis. Forensic document examiners are individuals who carefully scrutinize handwriting samples in a variety of civil and criminal cases and attest to the originators of handwritten documents (wills, ransom notes, letters found at crime scenes, literature drafts and so forth). A large-scale study is described that addresses the concerns of the US National Academy of Sciences regarding handwriting analyses. An original contribution of our work is the creation of a comprehensive list of handwriting attributes (developed by T. Vastrick) which served as the reference for our attribute agreement analysis. An initial list of over 2,500 potential attributes was reduced to 896 features which were free of disagreements among the examiners across multiple specimens. Challenges in collecting handwritten samples from the target population are described and a methodology to address these issues is developed. Challenges in the analyses and future directions are identified.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
ASTM-E105-04: Standard Practice for Probability Sampling of Materials. ASTM International, West Conshohocken (2004)
ASTM-E141-91: Standard Practice for Acceptance of Evidence on the Results of Probability Sampling. ASTM International, West Conshohocken (1991)
ASTM-E1658: Standard Terminology for Expressing Conclusions of Forensic Document Examiners. ASTM International, West Conshohocken (2008)
ASTM-E2290: Standard Guide for Examination of Handwritten Items. ASTM International, West Conshohocken (2007)
Boulanger Carey, M., Chen, H., Descloux, A., Ingle, J., Park, K.: 1982–83 end office connections study: analog voice and voiceband data transmission performance characterization of the public switched network. AT&T Bell Labs. Tech. J. 9(63), 2059–2119 (1999)
Huber, R., Headrick, A.: Handwriting Identification: Facts and Fundamentals. CRC Press, Boca Raton (1999)
Kam, M., Fielding, G., Conn, R.: Writer identification by professional document examiners. J. Forensic Sci. 42(5), 778–786 (1997)
NRC: Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward. National Research Council, Washington, DC, committee on Identifying the Needs of the Forensic Sciences Community and Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics (2009)
Sita, J., Found, B., Rogers, D.: Forensic handwriting examiners’ expertise for signature comparison. J. Forensic Sci. 47, 1117–1124 (2002)
Srihari, S.N., Leedham, G.: A survey of computer methods in forensic document examination. In: Proceedings of the 11th International Graphonomics Society Conference, Scottsdale, AZ, pp. 278–281 (2003)
Srihari, S.N., Cha, S.H., Arora, H., Lee, S.: Individuality of handwriting. J. Forensic Sci. 47, 1–17 (2002)
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by a National Institute of Justice grant through the National Center for Forensic Science at the University of Central Florida.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this paper
Cite this paper
Boulanger, M., Johnson, M.E., Vastrick, T.W. (2014). Development of an Extensive Forensic Handwriting Database: Statistical Components. In: Melas, V., Mignani, S., Monari, P., Salmaso, L. (eds) Topics in Statistical Simulation. Springer Proceedings in Mathematics & Statistics, vol 114. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2104-1_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2104-1_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-2103-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-2104-1
eBook Packages: Mathematics and StatisticsMathematics and Statistics (R0)