The management of domain irrelevant context information in forensic handwriting examination casework

That domain irrelevant context information can potentially bias human decision making processes is accepted in the psychological sciences. Although many forensic pattern examination sciences use human perceptual and cognitive processes almost exclusively to form opinions regarding evidence, we have been slow to engage with any procedure that might control for any potential effects associated with context information. The critics of pattern evidence have described how opinions may be unintentionally incorrectly formed and how bodies of evidential information might conspire to form cases where the sum of the totality of the evidence may be significantly more than its specialist parts. Given the body of evidence supporting the potentially serious implications of domain irrelevant information, it was decided to introduce a context management scheme at the Document Examination Unit of the Victoria Police Forensic Services Department. Existing laboratory wide evidence submission procedures were modified in the scheme such that, as far as was agreed to be practical, all handwriting cases were stripped of all but essential information for carrying out examination and comparison tasks. As yet no negative outcomes have been reported as a result of the scheme implementation.