INTERPOL survey of the use of speaker identification by law enforcement agencies

Geoffrey Stewart Morrison, Farhan Hyder Sahito*, Gaëlle Jardine, Djordje Djokic, Sophie Clavet, Sabine Berghs, Caroline Goemans Dorny

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

A survey was conducted of the use of speaker identification by law enforcement agencies around the world. A questionnaire was circulated to law enforcement agencies in the 190 member countries of INTERPOL. 91 responses were received from 69 countries. 44 respondents reported that they had speaker identification capabilities in house or via external laboratories. Half of these came from Europe. 28 respondents reported that they had databases of audio recordings of speakers. The clearest pattern in the responses was that of diversity. A variety of different approaches to speaker identification were used: The human-supervised-automatic approach was the most popular in North America, the auditory-acoustic-phonetic approach was the most popular in Europe, and the spectrographic/auditory-spectrographic approach was the most popular in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and South and Central America. Globally, and in Europe, the most popular framework for reporting conclusions was identification/exclusion/inconclusive. In Europe, the second most popular framework was the use of verbal likelihood ratio scales.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)92-100
Number of pages9
JournalForensic Science International
Volume263
Early online date1 Apr 2016
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jun 2016

Keywords

  • Forensic voice comparison
  • INTERPOL
  • Law enforcement
  • Speaker identification
  • Survey

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'INTERPOL survey of the use of speaker identification by law enforcement agencies'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this