The Initial Profiling Trial of a Program to Characterize Forensic Handwriting Examiners’ Skill

This paper reports the results of the first profiling trial of a program that was developed to provide information concerning the skill characteristics of document examiners in expressing authorship opinions on handwritten text and signatures. This information is provided to participants of the profiling trials in the form of a certificate that numerically describes the nature of their skill in terms of correct, error, and conservatism rates. The rationale for the program, given recent criticisms of opinion identification evidence of this type, and some elements of the testing program are described. The performance feedback package is overviewed which provides examiners with the opportunity for corrective action where required. In this trial, 20 government employed document examiners provided opinions on the process of production and authorship of 250 questioned signatures that were a mixture of genuine, disguised, simulated, and auto-simulated signatures. Findings for the group included a very low error rate (0.04%) for authorship opinions, with a high correct rate for genuine signatures, and a high conservatism rate for simulated and auto-simulated signatures. Examiners correctly identified that signatures were simulated in 95% of instances.