Although handwriting analysis has been proven useful in forensic science, it has many shortcomings that can make its authority in investigations and court questionable. In the past, convincing forgeries have made people question the 'science' of handwriting analysis.
Amongst a very precise science like Forensics, handwriting analysis can appear more speculative than things like fingerprinting, hair and fiber analysis, and DNA analysis. Here are some reasons why handwriting analysis can be proved ineffective in an investigation:
-Handwriting, although hard to imitate, can be copied by a professional. There have been instances in the past where professionals have fooled analysts. Handwriting is not always the only thing forged--- paintings, currency, and government documents like passports have been forged in the past and can be used by criminals to cover their tracks.
-To correctly match handwriting to a person, you need a sample of that persons natural handwriting (called an exemplar). Exemplars can be hard to find, as it is difficult to match capitol letters, cursive, and print.
-Ransom notes can simply be printed from any computer in the world. Printers are now available on a huge (and occasionally public, like libraries and stores) scale.
-A persons handwriting will change with age and physical weakness.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Handwriting: Techniques Used to Identify
The technique used to determine the culprit in the Lindberg kidnapping of 1932 was to look for the differences. Anyone can look at the similarities with a fair amount of accuracy but to look at the differences, especially the ones that matter, is not hard and often requires years of training and practice. Handwriting changes over they years. Also, each time you write a word, it will look different (at least some parts will). The letter's will change depending on where they are placed in the word/sentence. The trick is, the one that Osborn discovered, is what letters don't change; better yet, what parts of the word/letter don't change.
Another important thing to remember is that you have to distinguish between style characteristics and individual characteristics. Forensic Scientists want to examine the individual characteristics. Things like the sizes of the letters: width, height; the curves of the letters, the slants. Also if the letters are "slurred" together or connect. How close the words are together, or how close the letters are to other letters, the pressure put on the pencil on down strokes, upward strokes. Also the placement on the line is important. Example: if the letters on one line are so tall that they intersect with letters on the line above it. The margin left over is important as well.
PERSONALITIES IN HANDWRITING:
Does your personality match a particular personality type? You can find out about personality types here.
Typologies
There are a number of Graphologists, particularly in Europe, who subscribe to what is known as the "typological" theory of personality.
Typology experts have a particular way of categorizing personality according to special guidelines.
There are several theories of typology but the main thought behind them is that most personalities can be categorized according to type – hence the word typology. In other words a personality can be classified as belonging to a specific personality group.
As can be expected with a theory of this nature, there is always a great deal of controversy.
Typology as a helpful guide
Anti-typologists are critical of using typologies to describe people. They feel that people who use typologies are guilty of putting people into boxes.
However, those who subscribe to typological theories argue that they in no way attempt to put people into boxes. Typologies are purely to be used as helpful guides.
Be that as it may, there are a number of different schools of typology and some very important thinkers have subscribed to this line of reasoning.
Jung
Jung believed that people conformed to certain basic personality types and wrote a massive book to explain and support his theories.
He classified people into two main groups according to their personality attitudes. In fact it was Jung himself who first used the words "introverts" and "extroverts" to describe these two attitudes.
Now to these attitudes he added 4 principal functions, namely sensation, thinking, feeling and intuition. He suggested that by combining the 4 functions with the 2 attitudes we would arrive at the most important personality classifications.
ATTITUDES
Introvert
Extrovert
FUNCTIONS
Thinking
Feeling
Intuition
Sensation
For instance you could be an introverted thinker; or you could be an extroverted sensation type. Then there was an introverted intuitive type and so on. All in all, if you juggled these about, there were 16 possible permutations or personality types.
When we apply this to handwriting you'll find that the handwriting of an introvert will differ widely from that of an extrovert.
While the handwriting of an introvert will conform to certain graphological patterns the handwriting of an extrovert will conform to a completely different set of patterns.
For more on Jung's personality types Ref: Psychological Types by C.G. Jung
Myers-Briggs
The typology of Jung forms the basis of the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator which is well-known among psychologists today. It also refers to 16 basic personality types and is widely used as a personality assessment tool.
Le Senne
Highly regarded among French graphologists was the French philosopher and psychologist, Le Senne. He created a typological system which divided people according to emotivity and activity.
The emotive person is someone who is easily moved by events - he shows a lot of feeling. The active person is one who translates everything into action - so that even his thinking is action orientated.
Le Senne combined his two classes of personality with people who were guided by primary or secondary responses.
Simply put, this meant that they were either impulsive (primary) or they thought about things carefully before acting
Another important thing to remember is that you have to distinguish between style characteristics and individual characteristics. Forensic Scientists want to examine the individual characteristics. Things like the sizes of the letters: width, height; the curves of the letters, the slants. Also if the letters are "slurred" together or connect. How close the words are together, or how close the letters are to other letters, the pressure put on the pencil on down strokes, upward strokes. Also the placement on the line is important. Example: if the letters on one line are so tall that they intersect with letters on the line above it. The margin left over is important as well.
PERSONALITIES IN HANDWRITING:
Does your personality match a particular personality type? You can find out about personality types here.
Typologies
There are a number of Graphologists, particularly in Europe, who subscribe to what is known as the "typological" theory of personality.
Typology experts have a particular way of categorizing personality according to special guidelines.
There are several theories of typology but the main thought behind them is that most personalities can be categorized according to type – hence the word typology. In other words a personality can be classified as belonging to a specific personality group.
As can be expected with a theory of this nature, there is always a great deal of controversy.
Typology as a helpful guide
Anti-typologists are critical of using typologies to describe people. They feel that people who use typologies are guilty of putting people into boxes.
However, those who subscribe to typological theories argue that they in no way attempt to put people into boxes. Typologies are purely to be used as helpful guides.
Be that as it may, there are a number of different schools of typology and some very important thinkers have subscribed to this line of reasoning.
Jung
Jung believed that people conformed to certain basic personality types and wrote a massive book to explain and support his theories.
He classified people into two main groups according to their personality attitudes. In fact it was Jung himself who first used the words "introverts" and "extroverts" to describe these two attitudes.
Now to these attitudes he added 4 principal functions, namely sensation, thinking, feeling and intuition. He suggested that by combining the 4 functions with the 2 attitudes we would arrive at the most important personality classifications.
ATTITUDES
Introvert
Extrovert
FUNCTIONS
Thinking
Feeling
Intuition
Sensation
For instance you could be an introverted thinker; or you could be an extroverted sensation type. Then there was an introverted intuitive type and so on. All in all, if you juggled these about, there were 16 possible permutations or personality types.
When we apply this to handwriting you'll find that the handwriting of an introvert will differ widely from that of an extrovert.
While the handwriting of an introvert will conform to certain graphological patterns the handwriting of an extrovert will conform to a completely different set of patterns.
For more on Jung's personality types Ref: Psychological Types by C.G. Jung
Myers-Briggs
The typology of Jung forms the basis of the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator which is well-known among psychologists today. It also refers to 16 basic personality types and is widely used as a personality assessment tool.
Le Senne
Highly regarded among French graphologists was the French philosopher and psychologist, Le Senne. He created a typological system which divided people according to emotivity and activity.
The emotive person is someone who is easily moved by events - he shows a lot of feeling. The active person is one who translates everything into action - so that even his thinking is action orientated.
Le Senne combined his two classes of personality with people who were guided by primary or secondary responses.
Simply put, this meant that they were either impulsive (primary) or they thought about things carefully before acting
Handwriting: Pictures/Analysis of In-Class Forgeries
Thanks to Tameika Young for the Pictures!
The following pictures were taken, courtesy of Hamp Beddoes:
These are pictures that of a forging assignment that we did in class where the top is the original, the middle is a free hand forge and the last is a trace forgery.
These are pictures that of a forging assignment that we did in class where the top is the original, the middle is a free hand forge and the last is a trace forgery.
Fingerprints: A History
First of all, why is fingerprinting needed? Well society has always looked for a a means to verify a persons criminal record using marks of identification that cannot be removed. In early civilizations they branded criminals so that they could be recognized for what they were and the past crimes they has commented.
The Romans used tattoos to identify mercenaries since they would often wear different armor then that of a normal Roman soldier. Before the mid 1800's they used to identify criminals visually. Certain police officers with "camera eyes" A.K.A. photographic memory. However this did not solve the person identification problem due to the fact that personal appearances change.
In 1870, Alphonse Bertillon devised a system to measure and record the dimensions of certain bony parts of the body. These measurements were made into a formula in which, theoretically, would apply only to one person and would not change during their adult life. Fingerprinting however would make a come back when the Bertillon system calculated two people to be exactly alike.
1686 - MalpighiIn 1686, Marcello Malpighi, a professor of anatomy at the University of Bologna, noted in his treatise; ridges, spirals and loops in fingerprints. He made no mention of their value as a tool for individual identification.
The English first began using fingerprints in July of 1858, when Sir William James Herschel, Chief Magistrate of the Hooghly district in Jungipoor, India, first used fingerprints on native contracts. On a whim, and without thought toward personal identification, Herschel had Rajyadhar Konai, a local businessman, impress his hand print on a contract.
The idea was merely "... to frighten him out of all thought of repudiating his signature." The native was suitably impressed, and Herschel made a habit of requiring palm prints--and later, simply the prints of the right Index and Middle fingers--on every contract made with the locals. Personal contact with the document, they believed, made the contract more binding than if they simply signed it. Thus, the first wide-scale, modern-day use of fingerprints was predicated, not upon scientific evidence, but upon superstitious beliefs.
As his fingerprint collection grew, however, Herschel began to note that the inked impressions could, indeed, prove or disprove identity. While his experience with fingerprinting was admittedly limited, Sir William Herschel's private conviction that all fingerprints were unique to the individual, as well as permanent throughout that individual's life, inspired him to expand their use.
Fingerprinting Developed over the years and became more of a mean of identification. Juan Vucetich made the first criminal fingerprint identification in 1892. He was able to identify Francis Rojas, a woman who murdered her two sons and cut her own throat in an attempt to place blame on another. Her bloody print was left on a door post, proving her identity as the murderer.
Francis Rojas' Inked Fingerprints
Sir Francis Galton published his book, "Fingerprints", establishing the individuality and permanence of fingerprints. The book included the first classification system for fingerprints.
Galton's primary interest in fingerprints was as an aid in determining heredity and racial background. While he soon discovered that fingerprints offered no firm clues to an individual's intelligence or genetic history, he was able to scientifically prove what Herschel and Faulds already suspected: that fingerprints do not change over the course of an individual's lifetime, and that no two fingerprints are exactly the same. According to his calculations, the odds of two individual fingerprints being the same were 1 in 64 billion. Galton identified the characteristics by which fingerprints can be identified. A few of these same characteristics are still in use today, and are sometimes referred to as Galton Details.
The Romans used tattoos to identify mercenaries since they would often wear different armor then that of a normal Roman soldier. Before the mid 1800's they used to identify criminals visually. Certain police officers with "camera eyes" A.K.A. photographic memory. However this did not solve the person identification problem due to the fact that personal appearances change.
In 1870, Alphonse Bertillon devised a system to measure and record the dimensions of certain bony parts of the body. These measurements were made into a formula in which, theoretically, would apply only to one person and would not change during their adult life. Fingerprinting however would make a come back when the Bertillon system calculated two people to be exactly alike.
1686 - MalpighiIn 1686, Marcello Malpighi, a professor of anatomy at the University of Bologna, noted in his treatise; ridges, spirals and loops in fingerprints. He made no mention of their value as a tool for individual identification.
The English first began using fingerprints in July of 1858, when Sir William James Herschel, Chief Magistrate of the Hooghly district in Jungipoor, India, first used fingerprints on native contracts. On a whim, and without thought toward personal identification, Herschel had Rajyadhar Konai, a local businessman, impress his hand print on a contract.
The idea was merely "... to frighten him out of all thought of repudiating his signature." The native was suitably impressed, and Herschel made a habit of requiring palm prints--and later, simply the prints of the right Index and Middle fingers--on every contract made with the locals. Personal contact with the document, they believed, made the contract more binding than if they simply signed it. Thus, the first wide-scale, modern-day use of fingerprints was predicated, not upon scientific evidence, but upon superstitious beliefs.
As his fingerprint collection grew, however, Herschel began to note that the inked impressions could, indeed, prove or disprove identity. While his experience with fingerprinting was admittedly limited, Sir William Herschel's private conviction that all fingerprints were unique to the individual, as well as permanent throughout that individual's life, inspired him to expand their use.
Fingerprinting Developed over the years and became more of a mean of identification. Juan Vucetich made the first criminal fingerprint identification in 1892. He was able to identify Francis Rojas, a woman who murdered her two sons and cut her own throat in an attempt to place blame on another. Her bloody print was left on a door post, proving her identity as the murderer.
Francis Rojas' Inked Fingerprints
Sir Francis Galton published his book, "Fingerprints", establishing the individuality and permanence of fingerprints. The book included the first classification system for fingerprints.
Galton's primary interest in fingerprints was as an aid in determining heredity and racial background. While he soon discovered that fingerprints offered no firm clues to an individual's intelligence or genetic history, he was able to scientifically prove what Herschel and Faulds already suspected: that fingerprints do not change over the course of an individual's lifetime, and that no two fingerprints are exactly the same. According to his calculations, the odds of two individual fingerprints being the same were 1 in 64 billion. Galton identified the characteristics by which fingerprints can be identified. A few of these same characteristics are still in use today, and are sometimes referred to as Galton Details.
Fingerprints: Types
Latent Prints:
Although the word latent means hidden or invisible, in modern usage for forensic science the latent means any chance of accidental impression left by friction ridge skin on a surface, regardless of whether it is visible or invisible at the time of deposition.
Latent prints may exhibit only a small portion of the surface of the finger and may be smudged, distorted, overlapping, or any combination, depending on how they were deposited.
Direct (also called Visible or Patent) Prints:
These are friction ridge impressions obvious to the human eye and are caused by a transfer of foreign material on the finger, onto a surface.Finger deposits can include materials such as ink, dirt, or blood onto a surface.
Plastic (also called impressed) Prints:
A plastic print is a friction ridge impression from a finger or palm deposited in a material that retains the shape of the ridge detail.
Although the word latent means hidden or invisible, in modern usage for forensic science the latent means any chance of accidental impression left by friction ridge skin on a surface, regardless of whether it is visible or invisible at the time of deposition.
Latent prints may exhibit only a small portion of the surface of the finger and may be smudged, distorted, overlapping, or any combination, depending on how they were deposited.
Direct (also called Visible or Patent) Prints:
These are friction ridge impressions obvious to the human eye and are caused by a transfer of foreign material on the finger, onto a surface.Finger deposits can include materials such as ink, dirt, or blood onto a surface.
Plastic (also called impressed) Prints:
A plastic print is a friction ridge impression from a finger or palm deposited in a material that retains the shape of the ridge detail.
Fingerprints: Techniques to Develop Prints
Hard, Smooth, and Nonabsorbent Surfaces(tiles, glass, lacquered/painted wood): Use Carbon or Charcoal powder for light-colored surfaces. Use grayish-white powder for dark surfaces). Fluorescent powder, visible under ultra-violet light, can also be used. The powder will stick to the sweat and oils left behind and leave a visible print that can be lifted.
Soft and Porous Substances (cardboard, paper, cloth): Chemicals are used, such as Iodine, Silver Nitrate, and Ninhydrin. Iodine is used in a fuming process to photograph the prints. Silver Nitrate can be used a last resort when other methods do not work as it renders the other tests ineffective. A 3% solution is dusted on the print and then an ultraviolet light will reveal the prints as reddish-brown. Ninhydrin is made into a .6% solution by dissolving it in ethyl alcohol or acetone and sprayed on the print, causing it to turn dark purple in an hour or two.
Soft and Porous Substances (cardboard, paper, cloth): Chemicals are used, such as Iodine, Silver Nitrate, and Ninhydrin. Iodine is used in a fuming process to photograph the prints. Silver Nitrate can be used a last resort when other methods do not work as it renders the other tests ineffective. A 3% solution is dusted on the print and then an ultraviolet light will reveal the prints as reddish-brown. Ninhydrin is made into a .6% solution by dissolving it in ethyl alcohol or acetone and sprayed on the print, causing it to turn dark purple in an hour or two.
Fingerprints: Basic Patterns and Shapes
There are eight basic kinds of fingerprints listed in this picture. The loop is the most common, although most people have many different kinds of prints on different
fingers.
Here are some pictures I took of my own fingerprints:
My left hand.
Right hand, middle finger= Ulnar Loop
Right hand, pointer finger= Ulnar Loop
Left hand, middle finger= Tented Arch
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