Book reviews

Speak no evil
Forensic Speaker Identification
Philip Rose
Taylor and Francis. London and New
York, 2002, 75.00
ISBN 0-41 5271 82-7
This comprehensive and well written book encompassing pretty
well all you need to know about speech recognition/voice
identification is one that can be enjoyed by the complete
beginner and can also be taken as a basic textbook by the
budding student of phonetics and linguistics. Any other
interested readers from different forensic disciplines will find it
a fascinating introduction to a related area which they may well
find at some time impinging on their own cases.
The book is planned in a splendidly logical fashion. The first
five chapters are an introduction to what Rose calls the 'basic
ideas'. This part will be of particular interest to readers who are
want to know about the various ways of producing forensic
evidence on speech comparison
Rose spends a worthwhile portion of his fifth chapter in
discussing the controversial system of voice identification often
referred to as voiceprints. He looks carefully at both the
linguistic and the legal controversies surrounding the use of this
method of voice comparison using spectrographic techniques, a
method that was widely accepted at one time, and still is in some
United States courts. Rose quotes data published in 2001 that
voiceprints are admissible in six states and four federal courts.
The method is excluded from eight states and one federal court.
Rose leaves us in no doubt that his own opinion, whether from a
legal or a linguistic point of view, is that the method is unsound.
Rose's method of exposition in the second part of the book,
though technically more demanding than the chapters described
above, remains aware that he is presenting information to an
audience that may be only a little prepared for the considerable
expertise necessary to understand the topic. Comprehensive and
excellently presented X-ray photographs and detailed drawings
of a kind familiar to phoneticians and linguists are shown with a
readiness to help the reader to understand what it is all about.
The book could be regarded as a textbook for someone
embarking on a strenuous course of linguistic preparation for
professional activity within the forensic voice identification
field: or the reader may be satisfied from his own professional
activity in the law or practical law enforcement that he can grasp
the salient problems of dealing with material presented by
experts he might meet in the course of preliminary enquiries or
in court proceedings.
With a typically wry account, Rose comments in the final pages
of his book on the way that the introduction of technological
advances has changed the time scale and method of approach of
operators within the field. He speaks of improvements in
technique but ends with a waming that the wide introduction of
digital encoding in modem telephones may well have distorted
some of the original signal, leaving to further enquiry and
research the discovery of what remains comparable.
Stan Ellis
Useful principal
Principals and Practice of Forensic
Psychiatry
Richard Rosner, ed
Hodder Arnold, London, 2003, 125.00
ISBN: 0-34080664-8
I have welcomed the opportunity to review the Principals and
Practice of Forensic Psychiatry. As an American text, it may be
thought of limited value for readers working under different
legal codes. The cases quoted apply to a different jurisdiction to
those we are familiar with in the United Kingdom, nevertheless,
there are many appealing aspects to this text.
The principals that govern work in this field do not change,
depending on the legal rules applied to a great extent. The
examples given are relevant to the practice of forensic psychiatry
in the UK.
The structure of the book provides ready access to a broad range
of topics. Each topic is dealt with succinctly, with clear
references for those wishing to make further enquiry.
I found this an easy text to use for general reading and as a
reference. It passed the test of spending some weeks in my
briefcase and use of a first port of call in the course of a busy
couple of months practice.
This book goes well beyond many forensic psychiatric texts
which are dominated by the criminal aspects of forensic
psychiatric practice. Nevertheless, I found the chapter on the
death penalty and the psychological autopsy as particularly
useful guides to the less common aspects of forensic psychiatric
practice.
The section on legal regulation of practice is particularly
informative. This is a rapidly developing aspect of practice in the
UK and the general insights provided by this book under a
number of relevant topic headings have been particularly useful.
In addition to a comprehensive oversight of criminal legal issues
from an American perspective, there is an extensive section
dealing with civil legal matters. The chapters dealing with
trauma induced disorders and civil law provide guidance to a
rather more detached and analytic approach to forensic
psychiatric evaluation and often appears to be the practice in the
United Kingdom.
Throughout this text, particular attention is given to the
evaluation of malingering. It is reassuring to see such
science&justice Volume 43 ~ o . 4 (2003) 253 - 254 Page 253