Identification features of the minutes of interrogation and ways of authorship examination

Abstract

Forensic authorship analysis is a frequently used technique to identify the real author of an arguable document. Often enough, under study are interrogation minutes. This kind of text is difficult for examination because of its stylistic and genre characteristics: formal phrases and structure as well as different author and compiler of the document. The above features restrict the use of some levels of language analysis. This issue, however, is poorly covered in specialist literature, with only a few articles related to it.

The current paper describes the main discursive features of interrogation minutes used in authorship expertise. First we look at conventional techniques of authorship expertise and discuss their limitations. Special attention is given to the analysis of the interrogation minutes genre characteristics and their influence on the whole set of identifiers. The analysis of several conventional interrogation minutes techniques singled out two central tendencies in the authorship attribution: an identification features selection with new identifiers being added.

The aim of the article is to propose a solution to the problem. Our technique is based on the methods of The Federal Ministry of the Interior, but it also takes into account genre charecteristics of the interrogation minutes. A new classification of identifiers has been developed.

Additional features are offered to improve the attribution accuracy. These are clarifications, which are classified according to the semantic type of the object. In the article clarifications are divided into six types and a few subtypes and are also divided into low and high informative ones. The analysis of clarification is illustrated with the example of three different interrogation minutes.

The concluding part of the article is concerned with the techniques of the interrogation minutes used in authorship expertise description, materials requirements and the steps of the analysis.

Keywords: Forensic authorship expertise, authorship identification/identifiers, authorship attribution, minutes of interrogation, types of clarifications, techniques of authorship expertise.