A Study On Quality Monitoring Of The Forensic Handwriting Identification

The aim of the forensic handwriting identification(FHI) was to solve the scientific problem that whether the two sets of disputed handwritings on the questioned document would be the same source of the one writer and that the disputed handwriting was written by the some known writer or not. The FHI falls within the scope of criminalsitcs identification and also be one of the most important items in the Forensic Document Examination(FDE) from the past decade. Generally, the field and profession of FHI have to be seen as one of the few subjects which will be created under the judicial evidence proving activities directly. The problem of contolling and monitoring of the process of the forensic handwriting examiner(FHE), means regulating and trying to answer how to control the right of professional judegment of the FHE under the operation of the FHI.The quality of the FHI is reflecting the level of fullfilling the requirement of facts-finder on the judicial process. In order to assure the quality of forensic science, the most reasonable and effective way is thought to be controlling and managing the issues which related to the error source. The aim of quality of FHI,is providing the scientific support on identifying the writer of the disputed documents objectively and scientifically. So the quality control and monitor of the FHI, will use the knowledge of the quality control of forensic science and following the framework of it. Detailly, controlling and monitoring the quality of FHI covers the process of pre-identification, operation and after-identification, and inspecting whether the specific FHI case is under the control and monitor.In this thesis, by starting from reviewing the judgements of some selected specific civil legal cases,the writer used the method of reviewing the literature, case discussion and comparative studies in order to identify the essential requirement of FHI from the point-view of the judicial facts-finder,and then tried to construct a preliminary framework of quality control and monitor system of the FHI. The whole thesis can be divided into six parts, which contains the introduction, the reviewof FHI, theoretical base of controlling and monitoring of the quality of FHI, the permition and authorization of being a FHE and his/her identification competence monitoring by the forensic science provider(FSP), FHI method validation by the FSP, the process of FHI and its quality control and monitor, and the conclusion remark.At the introducing parts, the author, first, defined the fundamental aspect such as researching object, scope, value and significance of the topic of this thesis. By reviewing the literatures in relative subject and field, it was found that, nowadays, we have had been realizing the significance of FHI quality, but seldom theoretical researches still be seen, and this situation can not be a fully support state of the practical of FHI. At the viewpoint of FHEs, it would be the minimum requirement to operate the FHI when they get the right methodology and metaphysics recognition. For the FSP,When operating the process examination, it seems that using the management method to assure the credibility of the FHEs will be helpful so as to reach the aim of the FHI.The first part of this thesis is the introduction of FHI, at which the perspective of combining of the scientific examination of handwriting and its quality monitoring. The author argued that what can we learn from the error of the identification was that the reason why they occurred could be attribute to the usage of the methodology but not the methodology itself. When constructing the system of the FHI quality monitoring, we shall not only concern on the technical but the basic elements from the practical aspects. The mission and the scope of the FHI have been set up the boundary of its own quality monitoring and we have to obey this basic part. After reviewing the feature of the identification of handwriting, we can identify some key points of the quality monitoring system, which contains the personnel, material, and method, which also can be considered as the core parts of the system.At the part of the basic theoretical of FHI quality controlling and its monitoring, the author was first trying to review the judgement from selected cases, and identify the factors by which a judge will accpept or reject an FHI opinion. As a result the author found that the most important factor would be the credibility of the FHI and its opinion report. When the judge reviewing the report and hearing the testimony of the FHE, he/her main concern would be at the credibility of reaching to the conclusion by some general accepted methodology, and would not be the certification or some kind of authorities. The purpose of quality control and monitor of the FHI can attribute to: through control, and supervision, makes every FHI report issued by the FSP was done by competent FHE, and its process will quite fit for the reasonable spirit of the theory of legal and forensic science academic, and its conclusion was the result of using the method proved to be credible, and the report has some characteristics of readability and could be understand by the end-user of the report. So from the management view of the FSP, at the very beginning, it would be necessary to assure the FHEs having the ability to using some identification method and managing the method of identification effectively, which including some objective evidence for using the method correctly and validation. When operating the FHI, the FHEs was using many kind of professional judgement, it requires an appraiser for the dialectical thought and weighing. The process of FHI must also be legal norms regulating. Identification prior to the implementation of the pre-analysis phase, analysis, and comparing phases of the examination stage, and the evaluation phase, all involving technical professional judgement of the FHEs. From a management perspective, to supervision and controlling, the managerial and technical people was mainly according to the theory, jurisprudence and practices of the FSP, to control, and regulate the technical professional judgement of the FHEs. Last, the FHI opinion is ultimately to the users like investigators, prosecutors, lawyers, judges and other non-professional users, the report which contains the professional information should possess characteristics that can be understood, in a clear and accurate way to typically have not received special training, "audience", delivered its discovery and expert advice. Opinions on FHI report and its' readability assessment, should be the content of the system of FHI quality control and monitoring.By understanding the FHI quality monitoring purposes, and clear relationship between handwriting and judicial activities, we can clarify how to set and present specific measures, ways and means of FHI quality monitoring. For the FSP, means of the quality supervision, will be primarily access control and practice ability in two main ways. The key point of the former, is to set up a mechanism to confirm, verify whether a person is qualified to engage in the necessary capacity to doing the FHI, and the latter's key points, needs some mechanisms which setted and using internal and external resources, to confirm, verify that the expert is continuing to meet the requirements of FHI capacities. The main thread running through them would be the ability and its evaluation. For monitoring the process of FHI can be carried out from two perspectives. First point, which belongs to the "running" perspective, that is, to identify methods for observation of objects, and its advantage would be that objectively reflects the basic processes in the identification process, to run from the technical issues. The second point of view, which belongs to the "behavior" perspective, that is, to identify people and their behavior as the observation object, and this viepoint's advantage could be that after transformation becomes the principal perspective, to belong to the more easily reveal the identification process thinking, perception and other content, is conducive to deepening understanding of the FHE when using the identification method. The FHI quality monitoring of the operating process should covers the two perspective views.At the third part of this thesis, which covers the assessing control and competence monitoring of the FHEs, the author was trying to argue such a concept,the practice has been proven that simply relying on experts' "autonomy", it would be difficult to reach the purpose of quality control of FHI, " heteronomy" had its practical necessity. “Heteronomy" means regulation and need to be done from the entrance and exit. Access control and monitoring of the FHEs must be the core content, its purpose was to ensure that FHEs always at the "trusted" status. Access control refers to the FSP's management through training, assessment, admitted that a person meet capacity on using FHI method in identification, and permitted the practice of measures. At present, the administrative license of Judicial Expertise would be a prerequisite for practicing, licensed certification is only sufficient conditions for practising, and authorities reviewed in the form of reviews, simple law control has its limitations, so it would be necessary to be formally recognized by the FSP before doing the real case of FHI. The FSP have the responsibility to ensure that the FHEs were capable of application identification method for assessing the implementation of this body. Ensure that the appraiser's ability to continue to meet the applicable requirements of basic procedures and systems need to be established, based on appropriate criteria for evaluation, final form on whether the appraiser meet the requirements of the decision. And it is the essential problem of competence appraisal of the FHEs.The problem of whether the FHEs meets the handwriting expert's technical capabilities, was still need peer-reviewed at some extent. Professional skills of the FHEs were mainly reflected in the implementation of job tasks, namely the process of identification, so the evaluation should focus on all stages of identification. Meanwhile, it was necessary to combine the practice of prior training, through a variety of specific forms of backing to achieve integral and continuous evaluation.On the other hand, both FSP and the FHE, should have the continuing willingness to upgrade their professional skills, and actively translated into concrete actions and measures to ensure reliable use of capacity required for the identification, this is the inevitable requirement of epoch, is the inner demand of justice. When operating the assess control technology of evaluation of the FHEs in overall models, in general, each step can identify the specific knowledge, skills and awareness in three aspects. Between the various stages, it would be required knowledge, skills and awareness of a certain degree of commonality. Therefore, when monitoring the abilities of the FHEs, we still need to transform into an integrated perspective, all kinds of the knowledge needs to be combed, classified. Practically, the main way of being competent was to practice and practice, for evaluating the new FHE, it would be necessary to go through the scene and testifying in court ready to conduct a technical audit of the material, its practice under expert guidance, so can get comprehensive assessment of this new FHE. Meanwhile, the proficienct testing started to be an important way to monitoring the competence of the FSP, but we cannot only rely on such a simple measurement when we are apprazing the competence of the FHE, especially determine whether a FHE was competent or not.At the fourth part of the thesis, FHI method validation, the author discussed the present method used on the field of FHI. The standard practice of handwritten items issued by the authority of the Ministery of Justice of P.R.China, covered classification of handwriting features and characteristics, the comprarison chart, conclusion scales and its standard, the operational process and the identification of signatures. According to recognized guidelines and the spirit of the quality management system, before appling the method, the FSP should validate the method and provide some kind of objective evidence to show it was fit for the purposed use. Methods validation/verification, is the need for an accreditated FSP to use these resources and setting the system, consider all the technical operation of a variety of factors, such as the "human capacity, equipment, environment, method of setting parameters of reliability", from "method" perspective on the influence factors of quality control and monitoring. At this present stage, the actual development of FSPs in China, means the majority engaged in FHI that may not have sufficient resourve to do the actual validation. Thus, before applying the method, mainly by means of internal verification, the FSP must test the method and decide whether it is in line with expectations established by objective and specific requirements for validation, and objective evidence.At the fifth part of this thesis, the author discussed the monitoring of the quality of the FHI operating process and related regulations. After receiving the identification request from the judicial system, the FHEs must obey the rule and principle of FHI and the policies and procedures of the FSP, and first review the conditions of the handwiritten materials and judge whether they would be fit for the mininum requirement, and then follow the ACE-V methodology and reach some conclusion. The monitoring process of this main phase of FHI was essentially a combination of self-regulated and controlling by regulations. Is was important to realize that the FHEs and FSP must provided the credibilitieds of the identification report to the judicial system and had been treated the source of errors correctly. The potential source of errors of the FHI fell within the ACE phrases of the whole process, and some factors may be relatively easy to be identified and controlled, such as the recognition of disguised handwriting, so this can be solved by training and discussion between the FHEs. But some factors may be related to some subjective inference and seems quite hard to control. The FSP should set up some policies and procedures to control some points and scales of the operating process of FHI, and require the FHEs to follow the documentation and record standards which can provide some objective evidence to the credibilities of the process. It would also be wise for the FHEs to practice the professional skills honestly.Besides, the technical review officers(TROs) of the FSP must be the main person to implement the quality monitoring system of FHI. The TROs can play an important role in the FHI quality monitoring system, and they can correct some bias which the original FHEs would not realized and take some quality inspection. When necessary, the TROs will transfer the case to some special procedure to do some further review of the case so as to assure the quality and prevent making mistakes.When operating the examination of the FHI case, the FSP must realized that not every FHE will be the same, and befor forming the group of FHI, the manager should consider how to evaluate the specific FHE and his/her competence level and then make a fit-for-purpose determination. Meanwhile, the FSP should eastablish a policy and procedure to assure the chain-of-custody of the evidential material and prevent containmation. In FHI, the examiners should first classify all materials into the “Questioned” and “Known” group, and then set up the identity of each documents which can be identified through the whole process at the FSP. Maintain a credible system of Chain-of-Custody of the submitted material will be the most important rule in the justice sysyem, and it need synchronization rule and sufficient rule.The author also argued that the FSP must set up some “firewall” to provide assurance as to the reliability of the identification technology and methodology at the process according to the feature of FHI. The TROs and their work may be a representative of the FSP to conduct review and inspection of the FHEs' work. The monitoring work carried out by this phrase, should comply with the principle of “comprehensive coverage and focused " and " comply with doctrine, emphasis on the basis”. All the managerial and technical records should be covered by the TROs.After finishing examination of the case, the first reported examiner should transfer the case to the second examiner in the same group so as to operating the “Verification”. In this situation, the second examiner would be disagree with the first or the TROs also would have their own opinion of the same case which is denfinitely not the same with the first exmanier, so we call it a disagreemet of the conclusion. The FSP should set up some effective mechanism to solve the divergence of opinion according to some related criterion and this mechanism should also fit for the aim and features of the FHI.All the report should be review by the TROs both from the technical and managerial perspetives. Under the framework of FHI quality monitoring, we must foucus on the readability of the report. Readability of the FHI opinion and report means the subjective reasoning process(arguments, arguments and explanations, etc) should have a more comprehensive demonstration and makes the end-users quite easy to understand. The content of the FHI report was reflecting not only the objective process of inspection and verification, as well as expert reasoning processes and results, the former and the latter are an interconnected unity, the text and picture part of the instruments supporting each other, each other.Finally, at the concluding remarks, the author argued that the key point of FHI quality monitoring must be the FHEs and the operating process. It was necessary to realize that the quality paradigms of forensic science was shifting around the world and avoid to the blind trust of the quality triangle. By adopting the global trend of forensic science development, the managerial and technical system of the whole society should take the qulity issue seriously and reviewing the relationship of judicial process and the forensic science may be quite important in the next decade. The future issue and direction of the quality of FHI, from the view point of the author, will be at the total improvement of quality, which will call for new concept of quality of forensic science and relying the new shift of quality triangle. The legal, technical, educational and other aspects of the stakeholder will find a way to cooperate on the topic of improving the quality of the FHI. Secondly, according to the systematic feature of theory, the author argued that we should extend to the topic of quality monitoring of the whole field of criminalistics.