Science & Justice Volume 43 Issue 4 2003 [Doi 10.1016%2Fs1355-0306%2803%2971785-7] Stan Ellis -- Speak No Evil

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 com prehensive 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 introducti on 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 m ethod 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 phoneti cians 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 l aw or practical law enforce ment 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. tan llis 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 exam ples 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 comp rehens ive 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 evalu ation 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 53

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Science & Justice Volume 43 Issue 4 2003 [Doi 10.1016%2Fs1355-0306%2803%2971785-7] Stan Ellis -- Speak No Evil