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This thesis critically evaluates the manner in which low technology communication aids interactionally impact the quality of evidence elicited from witnesses with a Learning Disability (WLD) in real Achieving Best Evidence (ABE) police investigative interviews, when communication between interviewing officers (IO) and WLDs is facilitated by a Registered Intermediary (RI)1. Quality in this context is used in relation to the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act (1999), which describes quality in terms of completeness, coherence and accuracy. Conversation Analysis (CA) (Mondada 2013; Sacks et al 1974) was used to analyse multimodality interactions in video recordings of seven real ABE police interviews, the institutional goal of which was to elicit investigation relevant information. The thesis identifies participants' orientations to aids as tools to augment or replace talk to enable WLDs to communicate their evidence using the visuospatial modality. It examines the sequential phases during which aids are recruited during multimodality interaction: retrospectively, in episodes of aided repair, but more efficiently, they are recruited prospectively in Planned Intervention by circumventing a conversation breakdown. Aids are recruited by the participants for different interactional purposes, enabling WLDs to communicate complex evidentially relevant information that they would typically find challenging. The manner in which RIs and IOs construct aided requests for information and their unconventional modified discursive practices are analysed. An RI's position as a language broker during these atypical interactions demonstrates the emergence of a previously undescribed production role. Finally, results from a survey of 21 RIs and 21 IOs is presented, which corroborate the findings of the analysis. This study extends the body of research on multiparty multimodality embodied interactions. To the best of the researcher's knowledge, it is the first known interactional analysis of low technology aid recruitment in a legal context in atypical interactions. It presents several theoretical and workplace implications, demonstrates how such aids enable WLDs to be given a 'voice', improves the quality of their evidence and makes innovative recommendations for further research. 1 An intermediary in the Criminal Justice System is a communication specialist trained to work in legal contexts and relates to Section 29 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act (UK Parliament 1999).

The development of digital 3D trace recovery in the fields of geology and archaeology has highlighted transferable methods that could be used for the recovery of 3D footwear impressions under the umbrella of forensic science. This project uses a portfolio of experiments and case studies to explore the veracity and application of SfM Photogrammetry (i.e., DigTrace) within forensic footwear. This portfolio-based research includes published papers integrated into conventional chapters. A method of comparing the accuracy and precision of different measurement methods is developed and introduced and gives a comparative view of multiple recovery techniques. A range of simulated crime scene and laboratory-controlled experiments have been conducted to compare different recovery methods such as casting, photography and SfM photogrammetry. These have been compared for accuracy, practicality and effectiveness. In addition, a range of common and lesser common footwear bearing substrates have been compared using SfM as well as other methods. One of the key findings shows that DigTrace SfM photogrammetry software reliably produces accurate forensic results, regardless of the camera used for initial photography and in a multitude of environments. This includes but is not limited to, soil, sand, snow, and other less obvious substrates such as food items, household items and in particular carpet. The thesis also shows that SfM photogrammetry provides a superior solution in the recovery of 'difficult to cast' footwear impressions. This finding allows for 3D recovery of impressions that would otherwise have only been photographed in 2D. More generally this project shows that 3D recovery is preferential to 2D and aids in the identification of individual characteristics and subsequent positive analysis. Overall, the thesis concludes that SfM photogrammetry is a viable and accurate solution for the recovery of 3D footwear impressions both as an alternative and replacement to 2D photography and conventional 3D casting. SfM 3D recovery provides increased visualisation of footwear evidence and individualising marks. Digital evidence obtained in this way integrates with the increasingly sophisticated search algorithms being used within the UK's National Footwear Database and allows rapid file sharing, retrieval and evidence sharing. Moreover, the technique has significant cost saving in terms of time, equipment and resources. It is the author's opinion, having consulted a wide audience of footwear examiners and crime scene employees, that this technique should, and can be, adopted quickly by forces in the UK and USA and disseminated for use.

The attention that academia and forensic agencies have been giving to the decision-making process of fingerprint examiners has increased in recent years. This is largely due to the increasing awareness that experts' decisions can suffer from cognitive bias, promoting erroneous decisions. Even though fingerprint examiners are expected to not commit errors deliberately, it is of interest to understand in detail the influences (i.e. impact on performance) that external factors such as contextual information have on their decision-making process. This thesis begins by investigating how a group of experts (n = 41) and another of laypeople (n = 57) differ in their accuracy and response time regarding the influences of different contextual information. Although experts showed higher levels of accuracy, findings suggest that both laypeople and experts have a tendency to suffer from similar types of cognitive bias associated with the same types of contextual information promoting lower accuracy and higher response times. It seems that different types of contextual information have different types of influence in experts' performance. Hence, this thesis analysed in a second study the accuracy and response times of 67 fingerprint examiners, from 15 forensic bureaus, based in 9 countries, during trials that simulated the Verification phase of the ACE-V process. Results showed significant differences between specific types of contextual information when compared with control trials, challenging guidelines that suggest fingerprint examiners should work within a full blind setting. Due to the diverse sample in this study, it was possible to explore differences regarding the different levels of experience, methodological approaches currently in use (i.e. numerical approach versus holistic approach) and the accreditation standards that forensic bureaus had. Findings provided insight that can be used in future developments for methodologies, accreditation guidelines, and training for fingerprint examiners. Finally, a qualitative study was conducted in which 42 fingerprint examiners were interviewed regarding their opinions about contextual information influences and the methodologies within the ACE-V process. Results retrieved from interviews shed light on aspects of experts' work, allowing a better understanding of the motivation and the level of cognitive enjoyment (assessed by the level of Need for Cognition) as well as the specific types of contextual information which may not influence experts' performance negatively, but rather be a motivational factor for their work.

Eyewitness evidence is often essential for the outcome of an investigation. However, research has shown that memory is not perfect, and eyewitnesses can make mistakes. In the past forty years, researchers have developed evidence-based techniques to interview eyewitnesses effectively and to maximise the amount and accuracy of the information elicited in an interview. Despite the wealth of research on best practice interviewing techniques, little is known about how these might affect eyewitness confidence. This is important because confidence plays a pivotal role in the regulation of memory output. For example, research in metamemory showed that confidence judgements underpin eyewitnesses' decisions to report or withhold information. This PhD aims to fill this gap by investigating confidence changes within the context of an investigative interview and testing the hypothesis that confidence shifts following an interview might affect subsequent memory regulation. Study 1 showed that memory confidence can change after an interview. Study 2 built on this finding and showed that when the interview promotes free and undirected retrieval, confidence remains stable. On the contrary, when the interview promotes a directed retrieval via presenting Cued Recall questions, confidence decreases. A further investigation of the metacognitive processes that underpin these results (Study 3a and 3b) showed that different types of question lead to confidence shifts depending on the difficulty experienced when answering them. Finally, drawing upon these results, Study 4 investigated the conditions of an interview likely to lead to confidence shifts and those likely to promote confidence stability. Across the studies, no evidence was found that changes in confidence following an interview impact subsequent memory regulation. Overall, theresults confirm and further the existing evidence in support of good practice in eyewitnesses interviewing. As such, evidence-based techniques are compatible with confidence stability, while deviations from them are likely to lead to decreased confidence.

This thesis addresses how uncertainty in forensic science can be conceptualised, evaluated, and communicated to lay stakeholders. Traditionally uncertainty has been articulated with vague definitions, while typologies of uncertainty have not been systematically and clearly established. The evaluation of uncertainty has largely been restricted within the confines of the Bayesian theorem and the methods and means of communicating uncertainty have yet to be agreed by the academic community and the criminal justice sector. The first study of the thesis reviews the current narrative within forensic science with regards to the conceptualisation of uncertainty, through an exploration of the definitions, typologies and characteristics recognised and used by academics, policymakers and the courts. An interdisciplinary configurative review was then conducted into three allied neighbouring disciplines of medicine, environmental science and economics, to identify innovative ways to conceptualise, evaluate and communicate uncertainty to lay stakeholders in forensic science. As a result, three toolkits were developed, one each for the three facets of addressing scientific uncertainty. A third study was then carried out, to establish the sources of uncertainty that key stakeholders identified to be priorities for evaluation and communication for the application of science to the justice system. This study thereby tested that the findings from the interdisciplinary systematic review reflected the experiences of stakeholders, and in so doing provided a foundation for optimising the value of the three toolkits. The wider implications of dealing with uncertainty in forensic science in a more consistent, coherent and standardised fashion are then considered with a focus on both the discipline itself, and for different stakeholders within the criminal justice system. There is a clear need to recognise uncertainty as a salient issue in every stage of the forensic science process, and particularly so in the presentation of forensic science evidence in court. The body of work presented here offers a starting point for the development of a more coherent and consistent understanding of scientific uncertainty in forensic science, while also encouraging fruitful conversations regarding ways through which it can be evaluated and communicated to lay stakeholders. This research identifies the key aspects of considering uncertainty as a fundamental and integrated part of forensic science by identifying the nuances, complexities and limitations of forensic science evidence in the context of the delivery and application of science in a multiple stakeholder justice system.

This thesis explores the strategies used by suspects during police interviewing. In Study One, police interviews were directly observed at two different police stations and suspects were observed using strategies which could be grouped into three behavioural styles. These behavioural styles were refined in Study Two and used to differentiate how suspects managed the attribution of blame and their overall level of cooperation: Avoidant (rejects blame and uncooperative), Antagonistic (blames others and competitive), Compliant (accepting blame and cooperative). When the data from Studies One and Two were combined, the same three behavioural styles emerged. But further analysis revealed that suspects do not always show a preference for one behavioural style, suggesting that there is movement between behavioural styles during the course of an interview. The behavioural styles were then mapped onto a model of behaviour used in hostage negotiation research. This identified a second facet to each of the three behavioural styles, which suggested a motivational bases for each strategy: Instrumental, Relational and Identity. Case characteristics (e.g. age, criminal history, offence type) were then incorporated into further analysis, which revealed that the behavioural styles used by suspects differed depending on the characteristics of the case, particularly for suspects using the Antagonistic behavioural style. In the final study, qualitative analysis of the sequence and patterning of suspect behaviours in one suspect interview was carried out, revealing how strategies were used over the course of the interview and exploring why the suspect changed their behaviour. Finally the key findings from this thesis are incorporated into an integrated theoretical framework, and the implications for practitioners are discussed.

There have been numerous recent publications calling for an increase in the reliability of forensic evidence. Furthermore, there have been comments on a noticeable lack of research published with regard to the application of multivariate analysis to textile fibre evidence. In this work a classification system was proposed that would utilise a probabilistic approach, require minimal user input, and be robust. The system utilised microspectrophotometry data collected from various fibres - without the use of additional analytical techniques such as microscopy or thin layer chromatography to represent a more streamlined and objective approach. A set of optimal settings for the classification system were established through experimentation utilising acrylic and cotton fibres from indistinguishable and distinguishable sources. In addition, two multivariate analysis approaches were investigated; the application of principal component analysis for dimension reduction followed by linear discriminant analysis (PCA-LDA) and the utilisation of linear discriminant analysis alone (LDA-own). The optimal settings for the proposed classification system were found to be upper/lower self-predictive probability (SPP) = 0.9999/0.0001, exceedance proportion (EP) = 0.5 and number of fibres per group = 10. Up to 100% classification accuracy was observed when considering both fibres from indistinguishable and distinguishable sources - provided that 10 fibres were available from both sources and that the dye composition of both sources were suitably dissimilar if they were truly from different sources. If only single fibres were available for analysis, or the dye composition between truly different sources of fibres was too similar then classification accuracy decreased.

Whereas much of the limited research concerning the actual investigative interviewing of suspects has involved police interviews, almost no research has involved other agencies who increasingly are undertaking criminal investigations. The first study therefore examined 142 actual benefit fraud interviews, revealing that, whilst investigators generally displayed ethical interviewing standards, few interviews were skilled. Shortcomings were particularly found in terms of rapport development, summarising, and how investigators closed interviews. The second study (using the same sample as with the first study) examined whether there was any association between skilled interviewing and interview outcomes, finding that better interviewing conducted under the recommended interviewing framework, tended to be associated with better outcomes, whereas less skilled interviewing generally led to interviews resulting in untested denials or just partial admissions. Powerful effect sizes were regularly reported in the study. A third study focussed on the effects of rapport upon outcomes in investigative interviews. Rapport has been frequently cited in previous studies as a feature that improves the quality of interview performance of investigators and is likely to yield much further information from suspects. The third study examined whether the particular task of rapport, built and then maintained throughout the interview, had any association with interview outcomes. The study found that there was an association between better displays of rapport building and maintenance and those preferred interview outcomes (i.e., the obtaining of a comprehensive account from suspects or full and frank admission of wrongdoing). Effect sizes were frequently found to be strong. A further (fourth) study was then conducted to establish why the interviewing performance was so mediocre. 115 investigation personnel completed a questionnaire. This study found that, whilst there appeared to be an understanding of the essential components of interviewing, there was a considerable gap between perception and reality that was believed to be caused by inconsistent approaches to evaluation by senior officers and similar problems concerning the vital task of self-evaluation. The fifth and final study, recognising that organisations (such as those studied in this thesis) necessarily tend to be more risk averse when making decisions to prosecute, examined the skill levels of prescribed tactics used, and attitude displayed, by interviewers and the extent of their presence in 85 interviews. The study found that there appeared to be an association both between the higher rated skill levels and the larger extent of the presence of these tactics and attitudes, when examined against increased shifts towards confessions. Effects sizes were found to be consistently strong in this final study. Nevertheless, as only one offence type was analysed, further research of interview performance in investigation organisations (both police and nonpolice) is vital.

Direct comparison of dermal and epidermal fingerprints can be vital to the identification of bodies where the epidermal skin layer is no longer available for fingerprinting. It has been reported that identification based on the comparison between dermal and epidermal fingerprints is possible, however, there is limited research that supports this supposition. Epidermal desquamation occurs during the fixation of a body in Thiel embalming fluid providing an opportunity to compare dermal and epidermal fingerprints from one individual. This study aimed to determine at which histological skin sublayer epidermal desquamation occurs in Thiel-embalmed bodies, to collect and compare dermal and epidermal fingerprints to understand which recovery method is optimal, to determine the accuracy with which these can be compared. Tissue samples were collected from 40 individuals and fingerprints were collected from 67 individuals using black powder and photography pre and post embalming. Analysis of the tissue samples ensured that the prints recovered after embalming were dermal prints. Quality and minutiae analysis were performed by the author and by experienced fingerprint examiners (n = 16) from four countries on 80 fingerprint pairs (powder fingerprint pairs n = 40, photography fingerprint pairs n = 40).There was a higher percentage of usable epidermal fingerprints recovered using black powder (91%) than using photography (72%). However, there was a lower percentage of usable dermal fingerprints recovered using black powder (64%) than using photography (81%). The results of the fingerprint comparison showed that fingerprint examiners were able to match a pair of fingerprints (identification) accurately in 10 to 15% of cases and they were able to establish fingerprint pairs as non-matching in 30 to 45% of cases. Thiel-embalmed bodies offer a valid opportunity to study epidermal and dermal fingerprints collected from the same source. The collection, analysis, and comparison of epidermal and dermal fingerprint pairs should be approached by fingerprint examiners with caution, especially in cases where the fingerprints are collected from elderly individuals.

This thesis presents an examination of regional variation and speech accommodation in two socially salient features of West Yorkshire English. The first aim of this research is to consider the extent to which local level variation exists across the West Yorkshire boroughs of Bradford, Kirklees and Wakefield. The second aim is to evaluate the effects of speech accommodation, the process whereby speakers adapt their speech production according to whom to they are talking (Giles, 1973; Giles & Powesland, 1975; Trudgill, 1981), in forensically-relevant contexts. The findings from these examinations inform how generalisable population data is for West Yorkshire across the three boroughs and also demonstrate to what extent accommodation could impact forensic speaker comparison (FSC) casework. The specific features examined in this thesis are the West Yorkshire FACE vowel and word-medial, intervocalic /t/. The motivations for examining these variables are twofold. Firstly, previous investigations of West Yorkshire English have suggested that these variables may be realised in different ways across the region and secondly, both variables appear to be socially salient in the speech community under investigation. As speech accommodation has been found to occur more often and to a stronger degree with respect to features that are socially salient (Cao, 2018; Smith & Holmes-Elliott, 2015; Trudgill, 1986), it was expected that the participants in this investigation would accommodate in respect of these speech parameters. However, the main focus of this investigation is to examine the magnitude and direction of any accommodation behaviour, and to evaluate the potential consequences this may have for FSC outcomes. This study is one of the first to make use of the newly published West Yorkshire Regional English Database (WYRED; Gold, Ross, & Earnshaw, 2018). The study analyses the speech of 30 males from West Yorkshire recorded completing three semi-spontaneous speaking tasks that utilise different interlocutors. Participants are equally split across the boroughs of Bradford, Kirklees and Wakefield and form a homogenous population in terms of age, gender and language background, enabling a systematic evaluation of regional variation. For the analysis of FACE, measurements are taken of the first three formants at 25%, 50% and 75% across the total vowel duration. Using these measurements, a series of statistical analyses are conducted in order to establish levels of variability across boroughs and across tasks. Additionally, realisations of intervocalic /t/ are analysed auditorily and assessments of variability between boroughs are carried out as well as an examination of changes in T-glottaling rates across tasks. For both speech parameters, accommodation is evaluated using an acoustic-phonetic approach whereby the participants' realisations are considered in relation to those of their respective interlocutors. The findings of the investigations presented in this thesis reveal that FACE productions vary at the local borough level, specifically in terms of midpoint F2 values, whereas /t/ productions are not regionally stratified across West Yorkshire. Based on these results, recommendations are outlined for delimiting the relevant population for FSC casework involving West Yorkshire speakers. With regards to speech accommodation in FACE and /t/, results show that accommodation behaviour is highly variable across participants, both in terms of the direction and amount of accommodation present. All participants were considered to accommodate in at least one speech parameter, and a small number of participants displayed very high levels of within-speaker variability across tasks, highlighting the level of potential impact that speech accommodation can have on socially salient speech parameters. The consequences of these findings are addressed from both a FSC casework perspective and also in terms of sociolinguistic research practices more generally.

Recommendations aimed at preventing criminal justice failings caused by forensic science errors and quality failures have led to the creation of the Forensic Science Regulator's (FSR) role in England and Wales. The FSR role ensures that the provision of forensic science services across the criminal justice system (CJS) is subject to an appropriate regime of scientific quality standards. Despite reports of an increasing framework of quality standards overseen by the FSR, knowledge about the impact of regulation on the quality of forensic services is lacking. The aim of this study was to understand the fitness of the FSR role in improving the quality of forensic service provision from the crime scene to court. Stakeholder reports about the FSR role were analysed and supplemented with 18 semi-structured interviews with participants purposefully sampled from public and private sector Forensic Science Providers (FSPs). The experiences and views of the participants were analysed to interpret the extent to which the FSR role has been impacting the provision of forensic services that reflects the needs of the CJS. Overall, qualitative findings have shown that even though the FSR role has the potential to improve the quality of laboratory-based forensic practice, it is insufficient if attempting to improve the quality of forensic sciences carried out outside the laboratory setting. Cuts to police budget on forensic science and a consequent interest for cheaper forensic service delivery were seen to dictate the quality of forensic service provision. Criticisms indicate that it is more challenging achieving a forensic service delivery process that is continuously tailored to the needs of the CJS as a whole and not necessarily the demands of a specific forensic customer, because of the financial pressures on FSPs and not necessarily the lack of statutory powers for the FSR role. Concerns emphasise that providing statutory powers for the FSR only to mandate quality standard requirements are overly legalistic and will not drive any changes in quality beyond intensifying accreditation requirements, which will add to the financial pressures which adversely impact the quality of forensic science. Overall, the findings indicate that the lack of adequate funding for forensic service provision creates a gap in the role of the FSR which causes failures to address systemic issues which adversely affect the quality of forensic services. A suggestion is made for the provision of sufficient funding and for increasing the proximity between the FSR role and the management of the forensic marketplace. An increasing focus on quality culture is also recommended to build and improve the ethical and professional values of FSPs.

Conducting an investigative interview is cognitively demanding but there is a paucity of research that has examined the effects of cognitive load for interviewers. The overarching aim of the current doctoral research programme was to understand the cognitive processes of interviewing and how cognitive load for interviewers may impact upon their performance. Across five studies, this thesis explored investigative interviewers' experiences of cognitive load and tested the effects of cognitive load on their performance. The first investigation (Chapter 2), a field study, used an Interpretive Phenomenological Approach (IPA) to analyse investigative interviewers' experiences when conducting interviews with children using the Achieving Best Evidence (ABE) guidelines (Ministry of Justice, 2011). Interviewers described factors that contributed to perceived demands, including overarching cognitive processes, such as remembering information and making judgements, and specific factors, such as the emotionality of a case. Interviewers also described the consequences and impact of cognitive load (e.g., forgetting information and being physically and mentally exhausted after interviewing). The first experimental laboratory research (Chapter 3) examined the effects of increased cognitive demands on mock-interviewers' perceived cognitive load (PCL), and their recall of information. Under high, moderate, or low cognitive load conditions, participants watched the free narrative of a child witness. Participants in the high and moderate cognitive load conditions reported higher PCL and were less accurate in their recall of the witness's account, than those in the low cognitive load condition. Experimental laboratory study 2 (Chapter 4) examined the effects of cognitive load (high or low cognitive load) on the accuracy of interviewers' memory for information given by five witnesses, and their accuracy for monitoring the source of information, provided by the multiple witnesses. Participants watched the free narratives of the five witnesses. The witnesses described the same crime, but each witness provided unique details about what they had seen. PCL was higher, and the accuracy of participants' memory for the information provided by the witnesses was lower, in the high cognitive load condition than in the low cognitive load condition. Monitoring the source of information was challenging for all participants, regardless of cognitive load condition. The third experimental laboratory study (Chapter 5) explored the effects of note taking on participants' perceived cognitive load and their recall of information given by a witness. The moderating effects of Working Memory Capacity (WMC) and access to notes at recall were also examined. Participants took free notes or structured notes and, during the recall task, they either had access, or not, to their notes. There was also a control condition of no note taking. When taking structured notes, with access to notes at recall, participants' free- and cued-recall was more accurate, than it was for those who took free notes and for those who did not take notes, regardless of their WMC level. WMC and access to notes were moderators of PCL at recall. Finally, Chapter 6 explored, via an online survey, police officers' PCL for different types of interview (i.e., interviews with victims using the ABE guidelines versus interviews with suspects using the PEACE model), for both serious (e.g., rape) and less serious (e.g., theft) crimes. Police officers indicated that they believe cognitive demands are higher when they interview for serious crimes than when they interview for less serious crimes. PCL was rated as higher when police officers conduct an interview with a witness using ABE guidelines than when they conduct an interview with a suspect. Taken together, this series of results showed that investigative interviewing is cognitively demanding. Factors that contribute to interviewers' cognitive load were identified and when interviewers experienced cognitive load there was a negative impact on their recall of the information provided by witnesses. Techniques, such as taking structured notes, as well as interviewers' WMC, may moderate the effects of cognitive load on recall accuracy. Implications of this programme of research for investigative interviewers are considered, and options for additional research suggested, in the general discussion of the thesis (Chapter 7).

Forensic gait analysis is generally defined as the analysis of gait features from video footage to assist in criminal investigations. Although an attractive means to detect suspects since data can be collected from a distance without their knowledge, forensic gait analysis presently lacks method validation and quality standards, not only due to insufficient research, but also because certain scientific foundations, such as the assumption of gait uniqueness, have not been adequately addressed. To test the scientific basis of this premise, a suitable dataset replicating an ideal forensic gait analysis scenario was compiled from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany) database. Biomechanical analysis of sagittal plane human motion in the bilateral shoulder, elbow, hip, knee, and ankle joints was conducted across complete gait cycles of twenty participants, to investigate the degree to which intraindividual variation impacts interindividual variation, according to the following aims: (1) to better understand the relationship between form (anatomy) and function (physiology) of human gait, (2) to investigate the basis of gait uniqueness by examining similarities and differences in joint angles, and (3) to build upon current theoretical foundations of gait-based human identification. The findings indicate different degrees of movement asymmetry given body region and gait sub-phase, thereby challenging previous methods employing interchangeable use of bilateral motion data, and the use of 'average' gait cycles to represent the gait of an individual irrespective of body side. Furthermore, interindividual variability in all five joints is influenced by body side to different extents depending on gait sub-phase and body region, thereby challenging the claim of holistic uniqueness of gait features across all body regions and gait events. Given the findings of this thesis and paucity regarding empirical basis to support expertise, exerting caution when evaluating gait-based evidence admissibility is highly recommended, since the utility of gait in identification is currently limited.

Interpreters enable police to gather key evidentiary information during interviews with victims, witnesses, and suspects who are foreign language speakers. However, words and phrasing in one language do not always have direct interpretations, and interpreted interview evidence can be liable to distortions. To date, as far as is known, an extremely limited body of research has examined the impact interpreters have on the quality and accuracy of interpreter-assisted investigative interviews (IAIIs) and interpreted evidence. This PhD research breaks new ground by examining the impact the presence of an interpreter has on the quality and accuracy of interpreted evidence, both in the interview room and in the courtroom, utilising multiple data sources and methodologies, and highlighting the impact interpreter bias can have on the investigative and prosecution process. Furthermore, this PhD scrutinises how legislation concerning the provision of interpreters has impacted the work of criminal justice interpreters, while exploring explore how trauma and emotion during investigative interviews has further affected interpreted investigative interviews. Previous research has suggested that the interpreter is likely to be a factor influencing the quality of the evidence provided, particularly interpreter emotion, but this has not been explored empirically until now. Results from the four studies in this thesis indicate that discrepancies in police officers’ and interpreters’ expectations during IAIIs can negatively impact the quality of the interview. While both police officers and interpreters recognise emotions as a factor likely to impact the quality of the interview, currently little is done to actively prevent it. Results suggest that highly complex, traumatic crimes increase the likelihood of interpreting errors, which has significant implications for certain major crimes that are likely to involve both foreign language speakers and emotional trauma. Finally, the findings emphasise a lack of understanding on the role, function, and importance of interpreter quality, suggesting a need for changes in government policy regarding public service interpreting and make suggestions for improving interview training for both police officers and interpreters.

This research investigates the anti-forensic aspects of live memory acquisition. In 2009, the anti-forensic tool Detect and Eliminate Computer Assisted Forensics (DECAF) was developed to defeat one of the forensic tools, which is well known in the law enforcement community, Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extrator (COFEE). DECAF uses signature based detection method to detect forensic tools, and then performs anti-forensic routines such as modifying evidence, disabling forensic software tools, shutting down the machine to avoid evidence collection, to name a few. The findings in the literature show that the signature based method and various anti-forensic methods have shortcomings. This led to review the application of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, specifically machine learning algorithms, to the domain of anti-forensics. And, also that AI is not being applied to detect the live forensic acquisition process. This is the knowledge gap this study has identified and addressed to the extent that AI techniques can be applied to detect forensic memory acquisition on a Windows 10, 64-bit machine. The method that was adopted to address the knowledge gap was by formulating a hypothesis, that the memory (M), input and output (I/O), and central processing unit (C) parameters exhibit a distinct variation in MIOC pattern, known as distinctive native attribute (DNA) pattern or fingerprint, whilst memory is being acquired from the machine by a forensic tool. If these unique DNA patterns can be identified, then memory acquisition can be detected. To support the hypothesis of this study, an experiment was conducted to gather MIOC parameters, and machine learning (ML) algorithms were used to identify the DNA patterns. The results show that, adaptive (ADA) boost classifier has the least performance with a high detection error rate (Δr) of 73.4 percent and 89 percent on the memory and CPU dataset respectively. Whereas, linear discriminant analysis (LDA) classifier has the highest Δr of 78 percent on the I/O dataset. Random forest (RF) classifier has the least detection rate of less than 5 percent on the three datasets. To improve the performance of the ML algorithms the individual memory, I/O, and CPU datasets was integrated into the single MIOC dataset. This resulted in decreasing Δr of SVM, LDA, and ADA boost by 32 percent, 17.3 percent, and ADA 13 percent respectively. To further support the hypothesis, the MIOC dataset was transformed to images by using the concept of gramian angular field (GAF). Then, the DNA patterns were detected using the 3-layered convolution neural network (3L-CNN) model. The results show that the model detects DNA patterns from the I/O dataset with an accuracy, precision, and recall over 99 percent. Whereas, the model underforms on the CPU dataset with an accuracy of 64.94 percent with precision and recall of 69.50 and 44.20 percent respectively. The significance of DNA fingerprinting detection method is that, it not only shows that AI techniques can be applied to the anti-forensic domain but also highlights that forensic memory acquisition can be vulnerable to the DNA fingerprinting method. This implies, if memory acquisition could be detected using DNA fingerprinting, the process of live memory acquisition is defeated. Therefore, the investigator will not have crucial evidence to work with that could be found only in the memory. Another novel contribution this study makes is by proposing a mathematical formalism by which a digital forensic model (DFM) can be validated by counteracting the influence anti-forensic effects on various phases of the digital forensic process. Future work should focus on addressing live forensic acquisition vulnerabilities.

This study investigates the validity of the Concealed Information Test (CIT), considered as the most accurate polygraph test able to discriminate guilty from innocent suspects (e.g. Ekman & O'Sullivan, 1991; Bull et al., 2004; Grubin & Madsen, 2005). Despite scientific support for the use of the CIT, the test is currently rarely employed, due to the lack of demonstration for its applicability within real forensic contexts (Kraphol, 2011). This thesis aims to provide further evidence of the CIT mechanisms and demonstrate new potential applicability as an investigative and preventative tool. This study addresses these aims by evaluating certain aspects of the validity of the CIT which have received less attention in literature: the effect of visual stimulation, the ability to detect criminal intentions and the application of the CIT in a group setting.

Contemporary studies into crime scene practice and its practitioners have outlined a divide between the portrayals of the discipline in popular culture, and reality. Conceptualizations of crime scenes beyond physical spaces is limited, despite its potential to inform operational strategies, management and policy if viewed conceptually. This thesis formulated and proposed a novel conceptualization of scenes as complex, dynamic chaotic systems existing within microecosystems, highlighting the unseen dynamics of scene work. The effects of austerity policies in the United Kingdom and reduction in police numbers have for the past decade raised questions on the state of crime scene practice, particularly in relation to the effect of such measures on staff numbers, and scientific support spending. Through analysis of practitioner numbers, law enforcement spending on scene work, and the roles, responsibilities and expectations of law enforcement pertaining to scene workers, an overall understanding of scene practice, potential size of the crime scene workforce and the investment of the state on the same, has been presented in quantitative and qualitative formats using the seldom-utilized, but methodologically robust UK freedom of information legislation(s) (FOIL). The historical developments and precursors to modern crime scene practice was examined to determine the social, cultural, political and legal factors in the enactment of fact-based systems of guilt and innocence, and their continued influence on current criminal justice apparatus. Diminishing financial and infrastructural investment from the state invoked questions surrounding the quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) systems currently in place; the increased reliance on mechanization, and attitude of automation of austerity regimes; viability of scene practice being taken over by machines; and, future of the discipline in times of fiscal austerity. These matters have been comprehensively investigated followed by recommendations to improve existing systems and implement policies which hold potential to elevate scene practice to its maximum potential.

The recovery of latent fingermarks from surfaces is critical in the investigation of a crime scene. It could provide the identity of a victim of the crime or a person of interest to the investigation. The surfaces being examined may comprise of a single or mixture of materials, each requiring a different technique to visualise the latent fingermarks present. When the surface being examined is metal, the inherent properties of the material can make the visualisation more difficult. To improve the visualisation of latent fingermarks on metal surfaces, a better understanding of how fingermarks behave on the surface of a metal is required. During this project, fingerprint samples were collected on different metal surfaces and enhanced by the techniques recommended for use on this substrate type in the Manual of Fingerprint Development Techniques and Fingermark Visualisation Manual. These techniques were assessed on a larger number of metals than previously seen and showed how the results for each technique would vary across these metal substrates. Insight into the surface interaction between metals and fingermark residues provided by SEM-EPMA and SKP allows for this to be exploited to visualise latent fingermarks on metals. The ability to create laser ablated nanoparticles in aqueous solutions has allowed their use in latent fingermark enhancement to be investigated for the first time. This study has shown that it is possible to prepare gold nanoparticles by laser ablation and incorporate them in a technique that uses colloidal gold solutions (SMD-II) and show potential as a novel source of gold nanoparticles for latent fingermark enhancement. The survival of fingerprints on cartridge cases after firing from a handgun or rifle has been proven and shows there is merit in inspecting cartridge cases for latent fingermarks during a forensic examination. The fingermarks survive but it is the ability to capture them that is often not available in a forensic mark enhancement laboratory.

Fingermarks are one of the most important and frequently encountered pieces of evidence in a crime scene. Ballistic material may also be recovered from a crime scene where firearms have been involved. The current recovery rate of identifiable fingermarks on ballistic evidence is quite low. The study herein aims to improve the knowledge base in relation to the enhancement of fingermarks on ballistic surfaces by employing various fingermark enhancement techniques that have been underutilised, while also using Gas Chromatography - Mass Spectrometry and a new fingermark deposition protocol to further strengthen our understanding of mark enhancement. A quick and cost-effective Gun Blue protocol with exceptional results on unfired ballistic material that had been exposed to a variety of environmental conditions and some well enhanced fingermarks (from various donors) on cartridges fired by different firearms is studied and proposed as a routine police casework technique. Vacuum metal deposition, a technique that was mostly visited for enhancing marks on plastic surfaces, is revisited for mark enhancement on ballistic material. The results of 2 different studies with different donor pools, showcase the suitability of the technique for brass surfaces and fired brass cartridge cases with a wide range of donors (20), while also being effective on older fingermarks (2 months old). Our results show the potential of VMD to be a used in police routine casework, when the surface in question is brass. The use of Gas Chromatography - Mass Spectrometry lead to the identification and quantification of compounds that are able to withstand the extreme conditions of firing, and thus providing information on which fingermark enhancement methods would be the best candidates for fired cartridge cases. Squalene, palmitic acid and cholesterol were the compounds that were most consistently present in the fingermark samples, while also being less affected by the time elapsed after deposition. Our findings in this chapter explain the favourable results Gun Blue enhancement generated on old fingermark samples. An artificial fingermark was created as a way to generate reproducible fingermarks by loading the fake fingermark with a precise amount of compounds found in fingermarks prior to each deposition. Our preliminary results demonstrate the additional advantage of this protocol, which is the potential it has to pinpoint, which compounds facilitate fingermark enhancement for different development methods. This could result in a better understanding of all fingermark enhancement methods and therefore could lead to improved recovery rates of fingermarks.

Over the last decade, researchers have identified age-related (AR) DNAmethylation (DNAm) markers, which have outperformed all other known AR biomarkers in estimating the chronological age of individuals with high accuracy,using various tissue types. Their accuracy in age estimation has led to them being suggested as a source of intelligence for forensic investigations, to determine the age of unidentified donors of biological samples left at crime scenes. Initially, in this research, different statistical methods have been tested in order to demonstrate which one of them is optimum for the identification of AR CpG sites. The selected method was then used to identify saliva specific AR CpG markers using DNAm profiles from saliva retrieved from an online genomic repository and assayed on the Illumina Human Methylation450 BeadChip microarray. These ARCpG markers were used to build a saliva-specific age prediction model that was tested in silico on an independent saliva testing data set. They were shown to perform well in terms of age prediction, and consequently, they were further validated by targeted bisulfite sequencing of additional saliva samples, using the Illumina MiSeq® platform. Subsequently, a large cohort of 754 DNAm profiles from blood samples assayed on the newly launched Illumina Methylation EPIC®BeadChip were downloaded from an online genomic repository, in order to be tested for the first time for age association. Novel AR CpG sites were identified from both the newly added probes on this chip and from probes that were found on older platforms, however, the prediction accuracy of the blood-specific age prediction model did not improve compared to models built from the older Illumina Human Methylation platforms. Finally, a multi-tissue age prediction model that is able to predict the age across the tissues was constructed. This multi-tissue age prediction model will have potential applications in forensic science in assisting investigations to predict chronological age across different biological samples,regardless of the tissue(s) those samples are derived from.

Insider threats are a significant security issue. The last decade has witnessed countless instances of data loss and exposure in which leaked data have become publicly available and easily accessible. Losing or disclosing sensitive data or confidential information may cause substantial financial and reputational damage to a company. Therefore, preventing or responding to such incidents has become a challenging task. Whilst more recent research has focused explicitly on the problem of insider misuse, it has tended to concentrate on the information itself—either through its protection or approaches to detecting leakage. Although digital forensics has become a de facto standard in the investigation of criminal activities, a fundamental problem is not being able to associate a specific person with particular electronic evidence, especially when stolen credentials and the Trojan defence are two commonly cited arguments. Thus, it is apparent that there is an urgent requirement to develop a more innovative and robust technique that can more inextricably link the use of information (e.g., images and documents) to the users who access and use them. Therefore, this research project investigates the role that transparent and multimodal biometrics could play in providing this link by leveraging individuals’ biometric information for the attribution of insider misuse identification. This thesis examines the existing literature in the domain of data loss prevention, detection, and proactive digital forensics, which includes traceability techniques. The aim is to develop the current state of the art, having identified a gap in the literature, which this research has attempted to investigate and provide a possible solution. Although most of the existing methods and tools used by investigators to conduct examinations of digital crime help significantly in collecting, analysing and presenting digital evidence, essential to this process is that investigators establish a link between the notable/stolen digital object and the identity of the individual who used it; as opposed to merely using an electronic record or a log that indicates that the user interacted with the object in question (evidence). Therefore, the proposed approach in this study seeks to provide a novel technique that enables capturing individual’s biometric identifiers/signals (e.g. face or keystroke dynamics) and embedding them into the digital objects users are interacting with. This is achieved by developing two modes—a centralised or decentralised manner. The centralised approach stores the mapped information alongside digital object identifiers in a centralised storage repository; the decentralised approach seeks to overcome the need for centralised storage by embedding all the necessary information within the digital object itself. Moreover, no explicit biometric information is stored, as only the correlation that points to those locations within the imprinted object is preserved. Comprehensive experiments conducted to assess the proposed approach show that it is highly possible to establish this correlation even when the original version of the examined object has undergone significant modification. In many scenarios, such as changing or removing part of an image or document, including words and sentences, it was possible to extract and reconstruct the correlated biometric information from a modified object with a high success rate. A reconstruction of the feature vector from unmodified images was possible using the generated imprints with 100% accuracy. This was achieved easily by reversing the imprinting processes. Under a modification attack, in which the imprinted object is manipulated, at least one imprinted feature vector was successfully retrieved from an average of 97 out of 100 images, even when the modification percentage was as high as 80%. For the decentralised approach, the initial experimental results showed that it was possible to retrieve the embedded biometric signals successfully, even when the file (i.e., image) had had 75% of its original status modified. The research has proposed and validated a number of approaches to the embedding of biometric data within digital objects to enable successful user attribution of information leakage attacks.

Averting one's gaze is generally found to improve cognitive performance by reducing environmental distraction. Witnesses are sometimes advised to close their eyes or avert their gaze from the interviewer's face to help them concentrate on remembering, but to my knowledge no research has explored the latter approach in an investigative interviewing context. Therefore, in a series of five experiments, this thesis investigated eyewitness recall under various gaze direction conditions. Experiments 1-4 employed the same procedure whereby participants witnessed a video-recorded incident and were consequently interviewed following a short delay. In Experiment 1, participants either faced the interviewer or faced away during the interview. In Experiment 2, alongside this manipulation of witness's gaze direction, the interviewer's gaze direction was also manipulated - the interviewer either faced the witness or faced away during the interview. In Experiment 3, in addition to the manipulation of witness's gaze direction, rapport-building was included as another variable (rapport vs. no rapport). As minimal benefits of facing away by the witness were found across these experiments, in Experiment 4, this technique was compared to witness eye-closure. Both techniques affected memory performance similarly, with benefit to correct responding in free recall only. To summarise and assess the cumulative effects of witness gaze direction, a series of mini meta-analyses was conducted on data across Experiments 1-4. These analyses showed small and non-significant effects of witness gaze direction overall, but there were some benefits in closed questioning when rapport-building was included as a moderator. Finally, in Experiment 5, witness gaze direction and eye-closure were explored using a picture memory task (with different levels of difficulty). No differences between the two techniques were found. Taken together, these findings show minimal evidence for benefits of facing away and warrant caution against overestimating the likely effects of eyewitness gaze aversion in effective interviewing.

The foremost goal in all investigative interviews is to elicit a complete and accurate account from interviewees. To achieve this, psycholegal research has provided investigators with a plethora of recommended tactics for creating an atmosphere that promotes the disclosure of information (e.g., through rapportbuilding; Abbe & Brandon, 2013), as well as optimal information-gathering questioning tactics (e.g., open-ended, non-suggestive questions; Clarke & Milne, 2001). While most of the literature on maximizing information disclosure has focused on the verbal and non-verbal communication between investigator and interviewee, little research has examined how the environment in which the interview occurs may help in eliciting information. The overarching aim of this thesis is to examine potential environmental influences on two key elements of investigative interviews (i.e., rapport-building and information disclosure), as well as explore overall perceptions about police interview environments from a variety of populations (i.e., general population, current detainees, and police investigators). Specifically, across two experimental studies and two surveys, we examined whether an interview's environment could influence an interviewee's disclosure of information and perceptions of rapport-building. First, we examined physical spaciousness. In an experimental study, participants engaged in a virtual reality (VR) scenario depicting a crime and were interviewed as suspects in either a larger or smaller room, at a closer or longer distance. We found no links between room size and sitting distance on disclosure quantity or quality. However, participants interviewed in the larger room reported a more positive interview experience in terms of spaciousness, which consequently led to higher perceptions of rapport, compared to those interviewed in the smaller room (Chapter 2: The Influence of Room Spaciousness on Investigative Interviews). We also examined different interview locations for a witness interview context. Participants experienced a VR mock crime, and one week later were interviewed in either their own homes - expected to elicit higher comfort - or in a formal room akin to a real-world police interview room. While participants in the home interview setting reported feeling more at ease and in control, we found no differences between interview location on the quantity and quality of information disclosure or participants' perceptions of rapport-building (Chapter 3: Examining Witness Interviewing Environments). Next, we were interested in exploring individuals' thoughts and expectations regarding police interview rooms. While previous studies have suggested that a room made to be 'nice' and comfortable may be optimal for interviewing suspects, another study found it can instead lead to higher suspicion of the investigator's intentions. Therefore, we conducted a survey with current detainees and individuals from the general population who provided descriptive information about their preferences and expectations of police interview environments and compared photos of two rooms; bone which resembled a "typical" interview room, and one decorated to be warm, inviting and comfortable. Overall, detainees and general population individuals reported expecting to be interviewed in the "typical" room, but to prefer the decorated one. The decorated room elicited more positive feelings of ease and comfort, and lower feelings of suspicion than the "typical" room (Chapter 4: Detainee and General Populations' Thoughts on Police Interview Rooms). Further, to gain a more complete understanding of how contextual techniques are employed by practitioners in the field, we gathered police interviewers' thoughts and knowledge about context (i.e. environmental related interviewing tactics) through an international survey. A sample of 81 police investigators completed the survey. Our findings provided evidence that investigators believe the interview setting to have importance, and investigators reported to already be employing some context manipulation techniques, particularly related to seating arrangement, investigators' clothing, and item availability for suspects (e.g., water, cigarettes). The findings from this survey demonstrated the need for future research to explore the influence of context on investigative interviews, especially as it is already recognised by investigators (Chapter 5: Utility and Effectiveness of the Context Manipulation Techniques: Police Investigators' Perspectives). Lastly, in the General Discussion (Chapter 6), we summarize this thesis' key findings, presenting the challenges as well as suggestions for future research on investigative interviewing environments. We hope that this body of work serves as a foundation for future research in this limited, yet very practical aspect of interviewing practice.

This research aimed to determine which fingermark processes are most efficient at developing latent marks on internal walls that have been painted. At present there is a deficiency in the quality and quantity of fingermarks being recovered from such substrates by practitioners working in the field. This issue is amplified by a lack of published research in this area. Therefore, this in-depth study sought to address some of the key challenges faced by practitioners and fill the void of knowledge in this specific area. Various methodologies were employed to undertake this research, beginning with a survey of practitioners to gauge the current practices in use across the UK. This assisted in determining the most commonly used processes to develop latent fingermarks on painted walls and the types of scenes in which painted walls are likely to be investigated. The detail gained from the questionnaire then informed the design of the experimental work carried out within this research. The experimental work consisted of numerous smaller studies to tackle specific research questions, exploring variations of paint types and brands to ascertain if these have an effect on deposited fingermarks from different donors, and establishing the primary differences between paint types and categorising these into coherent groups. The results from these studies then assisted in constructing the final set of methodologies investigating which processes are most effective at developing fingermarks on different paint types. The results from this research highlighted that practitioners do not always consider the texture or composition of a painted wall before attempting to develop latent fingermarks. In addition to this, practitioners do not generally follow the published guidelines from the Home Office Centre for Applied Science and Technology (now DSTL). The findings from the experimental work revealed that there is a distinct difference between matt paints and other non-matt paints (such as silk and bathroom paint) and therefore they should be processed differently by practitioners. The most effective treatment for matt painted walls is cyanoacrylate vapour (dyed with basic yellow 40), whereas the most efficient process for non-matt painted walls is black magnetic granular powder. This research culminated in a proposed set of guidelines designed for fingermark practitioners to assist them in creating fingermark recovery strategies. The guidelines have been constructed upon rigorous scientific evidence and should significantly increase the quality and quantity of latent fingermarks being developed ‘in situ’ on painted walls.

Psychological research has provided valuable insight into the reliability of eyewitness memory, advising how best to elicit target information and predicting when errors are most likely. However, most research-based recommendations are based on the performance of ’attentive’ witnesses, who were aware that the stimuli held some level of importance, or who have paid deliberate attention during encoding. In contrast, comparisons of ‘attentive’ and ‘inattentive’ witnesses are less frequent. Inattentive witnesses; those who are unaware they had experienced anything of significance, may not have paid any deliberate attention during encoding. The current thesis aims to examine the amount and accuracy of information reported from witnesses following ‘attentive’ and ‘inattentive’ encoding. Furthermore, it will examine the extent to which techniques that facilitate retrieval can support witnessesin their retrieval attempts following inattentive encoding. Experiment 1 makes use of a dual task paradigm to examine recall of perpetrator descriptions following the viewing of a mock crime under divided or full attention conditions. A word generation was used to represent a passer-by witness engaging in internal thought unrelated to the incident of interest during the encoding experience. A bag theft scenario was used in the stimulus video while a word generation task was used to divide attention in half of participants. Following a 2-week delay phase, participant recollections were obtained using either a Free Recall (FR) or Mental Reinstatement of Context task (MRC). There were no significant differences in amount of target descriptors recalled or their accuracy, with a floor effect observed in the amount of details provided, suggesting that inattentive and attentive memories are equally incomplete over a delay. However, manipulation checks suggest experimental limitations in relation to the delay phase resulting in floor level recall across conditions. In addition, a manipulation check revealed no correlation between distractor task performance and recall task performance. These issues were addressed through changes to the paradigm used in follow up experiments. However, it remains possible that with an immediate test the divided attention paradigm may be useful in future research. In Experiment 2 participants were either aware that they were witnessing an incident they would be asked to recall (attentive condition) or unaware of the situation (inattentive condition). A paradigm similar to that used in incidental learning research was used to manipulate attentional focus to investigate the resulting recall of mock witness participants Attentive participants were made aware that they were witnessing an incident of importance being asked to attend to and remember the target (perpetrator) said to be using a stolen bank card, while inattentive participants were unaware of the relevance of the target. In this way attentional focus was manipulated in both a within and between-subjects manner. After viewing the ambiguous video clip of a queue at a bank teller’s window participants were then asked to report their memories for both the attended target character and a non-target bystander by completing either a FR task or a Self-Administered Interview (SAI). Findings show that attentive participants recalled more information about the perpetrator and bystander overall and that the SAI was found to be more effective in facilitating memory than FR. In addition, inattentive participants were able to provide more details about the non-target bystander than attentive participants who were asked to focus their attention on the target participant. No differences in accuracy of person descriptors recalled were found. Experiment 3, using a within-subjects paradigm similar to that used in Experiment 2, examined memories for attended and non-attended targets following short live interactions with two confederates. Attentional focus was manipulated via instructions delivered during the interaction with an attended target confederate. Participants then reported memories for both the attended target and unattended non-target confederate who participants were exposed to without interaction using a FR task (FR), Disaster Victim information form (DVI) or a novel technique developed for this experiment, the Form for Individualised Descriptions (FIND). Results show a significant main effect of attention instruction with target recall being higher than non-target recall. Accuracy was found to significantly differ with the attended target being recalled more accurately than the non-attended target while no significant accuracy differences were evident between retrieval conditions. In addition, the quantity of information gained was highest in the DVI condition followed by the FIND condition while the FR obtained the lowest number of details. Accuracy was found to be highest in the FR condition, followed by the FIND with lower accuracy levels being observed in the DVI condition. It was therefore concluded that the FIND was the optimum method of the three examined for use with both attentive and inattentive participants. Finally, Experiment 4 made use of a similar paradigm to experiments 1 and 2 regarding stimuli presentation. Participants viewed an ambiguous video with a scene inserted to manipulate attentional focus and were then asked to report their memories of the target person using a FR initially followed by an MRC task, which aimed to elicit additional information above the baseline obtained in the FR. It was found that more coarse than fine grain information was recalled overall, but the patterns did not vary significantly across encoding conditions (attentive and inattentive). Attentive and inattentive participants’ ability to provide person descriptions in both an initial FR as well as the ability to provide additional details in a follow up MRC was also examined with additional coding examining participants’ ability to provide fine and coarse grain details. It was found that more coarse grain than fine grain information was recalled overall, but the patterns did not vary significantly across encoding conditions (attentive and inattentive). Collectively these studies indicate that witnesses can produce useful information when retrieval is facilitated appropriately. The implications of these findings for the criminal justice system as well as theoretical cognitive explanations are discussed.

Fingermark examination is one of the most common forensic techniques used by the police and forensic examiners. Many methods for developing fingermarks on countless different surfaces exist, and various analytical methods are utilised to extract further information from fingermarks once visualised. However, there are still several areas of fingermark identification and examination that can be optimised. The need to dark adapt the eyes prior to fingermark examination in low light environments was investigated. It was discovered that participants could visualise an average of 16 % more fluorescent patterns when allowing their eyes time to adapt to their darkened environment. This large increase in the amount visualised by participants suggests that crime scene officers should be allowing their eyes time to dark adapt prior to conducting examinations in the dark.

Recent years have seen mass graves resulting from human rights abuses and violations become a stimulant for criminal proceedings and investigations. As a consequence the prospection for clandestine mass graves is at the forefront of international forensics and is considered of ever increasing importance. This study investigates the utility of archive orbital multispectral imagery for the detection of clandestine mass graves specifically in temperate environments, using spatial variations in vegetation stress as indicators of disturbance, indicative of the presence of a mass grave. Three studies were undertaken. The first monitored vegetation stress at the surface of two small-scale controlled mass graves, one containing mammalian remains (pigs) and the other empty, using a hand held field spectrometer for the first 121 days post burial. It was found that vegetation stress was not influenced by the presence of mammalian remains over this short time frame, however, the disturbance caused by creating the grave was detectable. Meteorological factors including temperature and dew point were found to affect the NDVI recorded more than other meteorological variables such as precipitation. Geophysical surveys were also undertaken, using temporal electrical imaging and electromagnetic profiling, to provide a spatial measure of the state of decomposition within the grave and to indicate the detectability of both a full and an empty grave throughout the study. By undertaking regular geophysical surveys it was found that both graves were able to be detected using both techniques up to 121 days post burial. The percentage difference in geophysical response from both techniques, between the pig and empty grave compared to the undisturbed ground peaked at 70 days post burial. This peak corresponded to the period where climatic events were recorded, including increased precipitation and decreasing ambient temperatures. Therefore, it is clear that the results obtained from the geophysical surveys were influenced heavily by climatic factors and in the case of this study, enabled the graves to be more readily detected. The second study was a long term decadal investigation of variations in NDVI of a large- scale, mass grave site resulting from the 2001 Foot and Mouth epidemic. This provided a pre-operational proof-of-concept for clandestine human mass grave detection using multi-temporal (18 day repeat period or multiple thereof), multi-spectral (visible to infra-red -0.45-12.5µm), medium and fine spatial resolution (30m and 5m ground sample distance) orbital remote sensing of a known burial location. A dense time-series of archive satellite images was used to study variations in NDVI of the vegetation directly above the grave, compared to the undisturbed vegetation surrounding it. By calculating NDVI using fine spatial resolution imagery from RapidEye (5m), the time frame within which significance was detected between the grave surfaces and the undisturbed ground, was able to be extended to 9 years, 11 months post burial. The third study concerned the active prospection of clandestine human mass graves in Bosnia where differences in vegetation stress, on a small spatial (~15m) but large temporal scales (exceeding a decade post burial), were examined for a number of known mass burial locations. In turn, graves were prospected for on the basis of appropriate spatial and temporal variations in vegetative stress and health. It was found that medium spatial resolution imagery (30m) was not useful in locating human mass graves on Cancari Road, however fine spatial resolution imagery (5m) was successful in detecting the disturbance caused by the exhumation of Cancari Road Grave 1 (CR01) in 2009. To conclude, variations in vegetation stress, derived through vegetation indices, can be used to locate areas of disturbance that may be indicative of a mass grave and other man made changes over time. However, it is important to consider the spatial resolution of the orbital platform and its appropriateness in relation to the extent of the target.

Courtroom discourse is widely studied (Matoesian, 1993; Cotterill, 2003; Heffer, 2005; Shuy, 2006; Eades, 2008) in the forensic linguistics and law and language fields. This investigation extends existing research on courtroom questioning in a new setting, that is, Malaysia's adversarial criminal courts. While Malaysia has a hybrid trial system, which is based on the Anglo-American system due to British colonialism, in 1995 it moved to a non-jury system with judges giving verdicts, providing an opportunity to examine continuing effects of a post-colonial context for lawyers' discourse. This study examines courtroom questioning strategies used to convince the judge(s) to accept lawyers' versions of events and also the power of answers to resists barristers' power and control. A corpus-based forensic discourse analysis approach is used to investigate a pilot corpus (the Shipman trial) and then to investigate 16 criminal cases. These feature Bahasa Malaysia, Malaysian English and mixed codes, constituting a small, specialised Malaysian criminal trial corpus, the MAYCRIM corpus, collected from the Sessions and High Courts of Malaysia. The corpus-based analysis reveals interesting patterns of lawyer questioning and witness resistance. Probing questions, that is wh-questions and indirect can you questions paired with material and verbal 'process types' (Halliday, 1985; Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004) maximise witnesses' productivity, while challenge questions, such as SAY-questions and invariant tag questions, coerce through personalisation and quoting strategies that face-threaten witnesses in cross-examination. Despite lacking polarity, invariant tag questions with do you agree, correct/betul, agree/setuju, particle tak/not, and do you know have the same potential to perform control and power as canonical tag questions. In response, witnesses demonstrate resistance via disagreement, correction, evasion and challenge, demonstrating that witnesses are able to overcome the power asymmetry that is particularly pronounced in cross-examination, though not without costs. A continuum of witnesses' resistance is suggested for legal practitioners to understand how their questions affect witnesses and at the same time help to prepare their witnesses for courtroom examination. This study makes three original contributions to theory, methodology and practice: 1) to enhance the field of courtroom questioning and pragmatics 2) to propose a range of corpus search terms that are useful for investigating courtroom questioning and 3) with implications for legal practitioners in general, and for Malaysian legal counsels in particular, and where the findings can be a point of reference for legal counsels and legal educators.

The structure and nature of fabrics makes them one of the most valuable tools in forensic investigations of crime scenes. Fabrics are widely used by humans, and are commonly found in households, vehicles, offices and hospitals, in the form of clothing, or as part of the surrounding furniture. Because of their structure, they are able to retain associative traces from different origins. During a crime, the individuals involved are most often dressed, and come into contact with each other. The interaction between the participants in a crime and the crime scene and/or victim, leads to an exchange of traces, following Lockard's exchange principle. The recognition, recovery and analysis of trace evidence - particularly Acari - from clothing, are fundamental to an accurate interpretation of clues provided by these traces. The retrieval of mite evidence from scenes of crimes has yet to be fully exploited by forensic investigators. This is principally due to the technical difficulty of recovering the mites, as well as an absence of experimental data and established protocols. To address this, here we aimed to assess the performance of commercially available forensic tapes at lifting mites from clothing. Amongst the tested tapes, we found that the J-Lar tapes performed best in a mite-recovery assay. In addition, we found that the negative-phototropic characteristics of common household mites could be exploited to drive greater numbers of mites onto the adhesive tapes and gels. Moreover, for best forensic practice, mites should be collected from the clothes as soon as possible, to diminish the time that has elapsed before lifting of the mites. We also investigated the effect of concealment of dead bodies using blankets, to understand the process of decomposition in relation to the possible preservation of mite traces from before death. The associative traces can be exploited as markers of crime scene location and as indicators of movements of cadavers after death. Mites found on a decomposing body may be useful in the estimations of time elapsed since death. Adequate knowledge of the mites biology such as habitats, lifecycle and populations dynamics, are beneficial to the assessment of time of colonisation by these mites or their carrier arthropods. Mites have proven their ability as associative markers in a forensic case study due to their environmental specificity, as a result of their sensitivity to subtle environmental changes. Our findings will be useful to forensic investigators with an interest in the use of trace evidence of acarological origin to draw inference.

The main aim of this study is to develop a forensic accounting system that will help in reducing financial statement fraud through not only its predictive properties; but also, the recommended forensic accounting procedures and policies which the accounting profession should adopt. This study through a neo-empiricist inductive approach, that is premised on an objective collection of qualitative empirical data, has developed a forensic accounting system by exploring the perception of Accounting Academics, Forensic Accountants, External Auditors and Finance Directors using a purposive sampling method. The findings revealed that the training of professional accountants', particularly external auditors, in forensic accounting skills, ethics, principles and procedures can increase their fraud detection capabilities which can, in turn, increase the chances of fraud detection in the financial statements and equally serve as a fraud deterrence mechanism. The main output from this study was developed into a model called the "Forensic Accounting system". This model has three elements; Audit Concerns, Education, Accounting Standards and Regulations. These three elements are not mutually exclusive, but one element can be addressed per time. This new system stipulates that in order to reduce financial statement fraud, audit concerns (agency concern, role and responsibility of auditors, management responsibility and odd agency situation) need to be addressed. Of importance in the audit concerns element is the mandate of the auditors. The mandate of external auditors needs to include the detection of fraud in the financial statement. Once the audit concerns have been addressed how auditors are educated will need to change. The changes that are required are some elements of forensic accounting to be incorporated into the curriculum and professional development of auditors. The last element of the new system is the accounting standard and regulations. Those grey areas that allow for the manipulation of the financial statements will need to be closed down by the standard setters. Two key issues here are the concept of materiality and auditors' responsibility. This study has implication for standard setters on the need to make accounting and auditing standards fit for purpose to complement the corporate governance codes. Higher education and professional bodies should work along the changes in accounting standards and integrate some elements of forensic accounting into the education curriculum of professional accountants in order to increase their chances of detecting fraud in the financial statement and reduce financial statement fraud.

Embedded lies, the topic of investigation in this thesis, have been under researched within the deception detection literature. The overarching aim of this research was to examine how interviewees’ strategic inclusion of both truths and lies within a single account may affect statement quality, and the subsequent implications for verbal lie detection. Across three experimental studies and one exploratory survey, I (i) explored the deception strategies reported by people who claim to be good liars (Chapter 2), (ii) examined how the combination of truths and lies within a single account affects the verbal quality of statements (Chapters 3 and 4), and (iii) tested if embedded lies can be exploited to facilitate within-statement lie detection (Chapter 5). Chapter 2 (n = 194) explored deception by investigating how laypeople’s self-reported ability to deceive was associated with their lie frequency, characteristics, and deception strategies. Of particular interest was whether the strategic inclusion of truthful details into lies corresponded to higher perceptions of deception ability. Results showed that self-reported good liars reported embedding lies as their most common strategy for deceiving successfully. Chapter 3 (n = 144), experimentally tested how interviewees strategically regulate the information they provide when their accounts contain both truthful and deceptive information. Results showed that interviewees calibrated the richness of detail provided in the first element of their statement to be consistent with the veracity of the second element, such that elements followed by a lie were less detailed than elements followed by a truth. Further examination revealed that participants also calibrated their lies according to both the preceding and the following element, with lies becoming more detailed when they were flanked by truthful information compared to when they were flanked by other lies. In light of these results, Chapter 4 (n = 111) examined whether embedded lies differed qualitatively from full fabrications. The results showed that the two types of lies did not differ on a number of content-based cues (e.g., detail richness), but that lies embedded in otherwise truthful statements could be distinguished from truths embedded in truthful statements on the basis of detail richness and statement quality (i.e., clarity and plausibility). Finally, Chapter 5 (n = 148) tested whether lie detection accuracy could be improved by using embedded lies as a within-statement baseline comparison. Contrary to the hypothesis, results showed that instructing participants to make a within-statement baseline comparison did not increase the accuracy of their veracity assessments. Taking the results of these studies together, it could be concluded that liars aim to strategically maintain consistency regarding the quality of information provided between truths and lies within their statements; however, content-based methods of verbal credibility assessment based on the cues measured in this research appear to be robust against this strategy. The results of this thesis emphasise that lie detectors should exploit liars’ attempts at maintaining consistency by utilising methods of verbal baselining that control for both the individual and the situation.

With the enormous increase in the use and volume of photographs and videos, multimedia-based digital evidence now plays an increasingly fundamental role in criminal investigations. However, with the increase, it is becoming time-consuming and costly for investigators to analyse content manually. Within the research community, focus on multimedia content has tended to be on highly specialised scenarios such as tattoo identification, number plate recognition, and child exploitation. An investigator's ability to search multimedia data based on keywords (an approach that already exists within forensic tools for character-based evidence) could provide a simple and effective approach for identifying relevant imagery. This thesis proposes and demonstrates the value of using a multi-algorithmic approach via fusion to achieve the best image annotation performance. The results show that from existing systems, the highest average recall was achieved by Imagga with 53% while the proposed multi-algorithmic system achieved 77% across the select datasets. Subsequently, a novel Object-based Multimedia Forensic Analysis Tool (OM-FAT) architecture was proposed. The OM-FAT automates the identification and extraction of annotation-based evidence from multimedia content. Besides making multimedia data searchable, the OM-FAT system enables investigators to perform various forensic analyses (search using annotations, metadata, object matching, text similarity and geo-tracking) to help investigators understand the relationship between artefacts, thus reducing the time taken to perform an investigation and the investigator's cognitive load. It will enable investigators to ask higher-level and more abstract questions of the data, then find answers to the essential questions in the investigation: what, who, why, how, when, and where. The research includes a detailed illustration of the architectural requirements, engines, and complete design of the system workflow, which represents a full case management system. To highlight the ease of use and demonstrate the system's ability to correlate between multimedia, a prototype was developed. The prototype integrates the functionalities of the OM-FAT tool and demonstrates how the system would help digital investigators find pieces of evidence among a large number of images starting from the acquisition stage and ending in the reporting stage with less effort and in less time.

Modern Digital Forensic (DF) departments/sections are witnessing rapid increase in digital forensic cases through the years. The challenges of DF cases investigation are getting more robust and they are affecting digital forensic investigation processes. Accordingly, understanding different factors affecting Person-Hours of investigation from real cases records, and recognising the context of work with different strategies and practices performed in different departments. It is necessary to create a stable ground to face all the factors affecting the investigative processes. This research detailsthe cases' trends in the D¬ubai Police. It also identifies the main challenges encountered by DF including rising volumes of data, and case complexity, using real case records from the Dubai Police, this extensive research explains the contribution of several factors to the delay in the DF investigation process. The research also elucidates the context of work of DF departments in other locations and other countries to understand a range of case allocation strategies and case management procedures. The research contributes a set of Decision Tables that could be used by DF managers and supervisors to select best proposed case allocation strategies and case management procedures. The research is accomplished through a series of three studies referred to as Study One, Study Two, and Study Three. Study One (Investigation of the Dubai Police Records) involves a quantitative analysis of secondary data in the form of case records from the Dubai Police (DP) Database and associated reports. This study addresses the first research question (RQ1): "What are the trends and challenges encountered by practitioners faced with large volume/heterogeneity DF investigations?" by measuring the growth of cases and identifying the main factors for the delay in DF investigations. Study Two (Interviews with DF managers) follows a qualitative approach using the phenomenological model, and covers the second research question (RQ2): "What are the effect of different factors behind the delay of DF investigation process?" The study identifies the common factors affecting delay in DF investigations, from the diverse experiences and backgrounds of DF decision makers around the world. Study Three (Confirmation of the Interviews) again uses the phenomenological model, and covers the third research question (RQ3): "What are the different case management procedures and workflow implementation practices currently used?" This study evaluates the efficacy of different case allocation strategies and workflow implementation practices with selected participants and results in a contribution to DF in the form of a series of Decision Tables for case allocation. The main findings of the research explain the main factors that lead to the creation of delay in DF investigation and thereafter affect the DF investigation process. Moreover, this research identifies case management strategies and workflow implementation practices. The research also suggests several Decision Tables to allow managers and people who are in charge to select a case management strategy and workflow implementation depending on several conditions.

Bare footprints, marks or impressions found at crime scenes can potentially provide criminal investigators with intelligence relating to the stature, gait of a perpetrator or aid the reconstruction of a crime scene. Currently, little is known about the inter- and intra-variations in bare footprint morphologies or the prevalence of certain characteristics in bare footprints from distinct races. To understand such variability requires large datasets of bare footprints. One of the primary aims of this thesis was to develop a novel, inexpensive method to record control samples and use the method to generate large datasets of bare footprints. The reliability of this method was investigated, and the qualitative and quantitative results indicated that there was repeatability and comparability between the new method (lotion) and the industry standard existing methods, for example, the inkless shoeprint kit and fingerprint ink. Following the successful testing of the lotion method, the lotion was used to gather static control bare footprints from three distinct races, White British (n = 25); Chinese (n =25); and Indian (n = 25). The quantitative data consisting of the footprint dimensions were converted to ratios. In addition, the foot outline was converted to morphological landmarks and the data was analysed using principle component analysis (PCA) and model-based cluster analysis (MBCA) to investigate the relationships between the three races. The results showed that the data from the three races could be placed into their respective racial groups using the x and y morphometric landmark coordinates. The resulting bare footprints data generated during this project was subsequently used to establish a database in Microsoft Access Database (MAD) to allow the data to be stored and new data to be added in, for future research work.

In England and Wales, the 'war on terror' has been argued to impact adversely on existing race relations policies. Recent research has suggested that changes in legislation (such as wide discretionary powers of stop and search) and counter-terrorism measures (such as arrest and the extension of pre-charge detention of 28 days under the Terrorism Act [2006], and the use of control orders to detain without trial) may have contributed to the construction and reinforcement of the Muslim community as a 'suspect', which, in turn, may result in a police bias towards members of the Muslim community. Research showed that such police bias had contributed to the grave violations of human rights with appalling consequences that involved miscarriages of justice. This thesis focuses on an under-researched aspect of police investigative and interviewing processes, namely, the influence of prejudicial stereotyping on criminal investigations when investigating the suspects from a 'suspect' community. This thesis examined the influence of prejudicial stereotyping (within the context of criminal investigations) and originally contributed to the existing knowledge through the course of five studies. The first study focused on the role of prejudicial stereotyping in stop and search practices. This first study examined more than 2,100 stop and search records of the provincial police force in England and Wales, as well as 20 semi-structured interviews which were conducted with serving police officers (from the same force) to examine whether police officers use prejudicial stereotypes to inform suspicions in their day to day policing. This first study ascertained that officers rely on certain types of stereotypes (e.g. people's age, race, appearance, location, and social class) to inform their suspicions. In order to examine how such prejudicial stereotyping may affect criminal investigations, the second study in this thesis utilised a novel approach. In this second study, an innovative instrument 'the Minhas Investigative Interviewing Prejudicial Stereotyping Scale' (MIIPSS) was developed and used to assess the apparent level of interviewers' prejudicial stereotyping towards suspects from certain stigmatised groups. This study involved semi-structured interviews with twenty people, who had previously been interviewed as suspects in England and also eight very experienced lawyers. Both their views were measured using the MIIPSS before being subjected to a Guttman analysis. Statistical analyses showed that the MIIPSS satisfies the criteria for classification as a valid unidimensional and cumulative scale. It was found that the MIIPSS could be used as a tool to measure prejudicial stereotyping in investigative interviews towards suspects from stigmatised groups or individuals suspected of different types of crimes. The third study focused on the role of prejudicial stereotyping within the context of a 'suspect' community and investigative interviewing practices. As far as it is known, this is the first study that has obtained views from twenty-two real-life Asian Muslim suspects' and explored their perceptions to examine whether prejudicial stereotypes could influence investigative interviews. Thematic analysis of interviews revealed that around two-thirds of the suspects reported perceiving the demonstration of various stereotyping by police officers during interviews, half of whom indicated that the interviewers demonstrated racial/religious stereotypes via discriminatory behaviour. The fourth study in this thesis broke new ground by examining the perceptions of fifteen very experienced legal representatives who had represented suspects in the police interviews. Thematic analysis of interview transcripts revealed that one-third of the legal representatives reported that they witnessed instances (in what these legal representatives described as a reckoned comparable case) when a white suspect was released whereas a charge was sought against an Asian Muslim suspect. Additionally, a quarter of these legal representatives mentioned instances of perceived police interviewers' hostile and discriminatory behaviour towards their Muslim clients, also reporting that they felt such hostility was due to their client's Muslim background. The final study in this thesis is novel and groundbreaking to have analysed the influence of prejudicial stereotyping on real-life police interviewers' investigative decision-making within the context of the 'suspect' community. In order to explore whether a 'suspect' community stereotyping could influence police officers' instigative decision-making, the fifth study utilised information gathered via semi-structured interviews, conducted individually with twenty serving police officers from a single police organisation in England. During these interviews the same scenario was put to each police officer in turn, only differing in the name of the suspect (which for one half of the sample referred to an indigenous person from the UK, while the other half was referred to a suspect with obvious Muslim name). As a result of crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis (csQCA), it was found that when the 'Muslim suspect condition' was applied, six times as many officers stated that they would charge him with possession and intent to supply class A drugs than did those in the indigenous suspect condition. These results triangulated with those of the suspects and legal representatives' perceptions that the ethnicity and religious background may have played a role and influenced the outcome of investigations. In conclusion, findings from this thesis are not only consistent with the Hillyard's study (i.e. the 'suspect' community stereotyping may result in a police bias against members of the 'suspects' community) but the findings also suggest that perceived prejudicial stereotypes (based on a suspect's group membership) indeed may influence the outcome(s) of the criminal investigations.

The Self-Administered Interview© (SAI©) is an eyewitness interviewing tool designed to help protect eyewitness memory and elicit a comprehensive initial statement (Gabbert, Hope, & Fisher, 2009). Early research shows promising results in general adult samples. Whether the SAI© is an effective tool for older adult witnesses has not yet been fully addressed. Older adults will become increasingly important as a witness population in the future, yet perform worse compared to young adults. Some attempts have been made to aid older adult witnesses, but an easy-to-apply and effective method is yet to be introduced. This dissertation presents an overview of current knowledge on eyewitnesses and provides a theoretical basis for the empirical chapters. It further presents results of a systematic review and several meta-analyses on the effectiveness of the SAI© as a means to enhance eyewitness testimony. The meta-analyses cover 38 experimental comparisons from 22 empirical studies representing 1712 interviewees. Results indicate a strong benefit of the SAI both immediately after the witnessed crime (d = 1.20) and in a delayed recall (d = 0.92 compared to no initial recall) after one to three weeks. The third large chapter of this dissertation presents the results of an experiment that investigated the effectiveness of the SAI© for older witnesses’ testimony, suggestibility and lineup performance. 144 participants, half of which were 60 years or older and half aged 18-30 years, took part in two sessions. In the first session, they were shown a film of a staged crime and either filled in the SAI©, gave a written free recall or no initial recall. In the second session after one week they were then asked to give a free recall of what they remembered, answer questions including suggestive questions, and also to identify the perpetrator from the film from a 6-person simultaneous photo lineup. Results confirm the classic SAI© effect for young adults, show a small beneficial effect for older adults and also indicate a beneficial effect for lineup performance for the first time.

Jewellery as a tool in the identification of the deceased is increasingly referenced within the scientific process of Forensic Human Identification (FHI). Jewellery’s prevalence in society, connection to both place and geographic region, potential to corroborate primary methods of identification (such as DNA, fingerprinting, or odontology), and robust physical form, means it progressively contributes to practices surrounding identification in a number of forensic fields. Physical marks or characteristics such as hallmarks or serial numbers, personal inscriptions or engravings, representational symbols (such as medals, badges of office, religious iconography or military insignia), and genealogical or gemmological markings, may also prove useful in informing investigators much about a piece - and potentially - the individual to whom it may have belonged. Despite this, jewellery is an approach to establishing human identity that has yet to be explicitly investigated from the perspective of either forensic science or jewellery design. The aim of this research has been to explore the potential of jewellery and highlight its significance within this context, through employing the processes and approaches of design. Informed by my own background in both jewellery and service design; I sought to co-design the interdisciplinary proposition of Forensic Jewellery as an extension of my own personal design practice, in addition to a broader hybrid methodology through which the dualistic perspective(s) of both forensic science and jewellery design may come to be mutually explored. By centring my methodology upon my practice, the research serves to document and reflect upon my auto-ethnographic experiences in inadvertently ‘prototyping’ my emergent new role as a Forensic Jeweller – a jewellery designer engaged within, or whose work pertains to, the field of forensic science. Through a range of forensic-based fieldwork, I sought to immerse myself within various communities of forensic practice by way of considering how a design practitioner may come to add value to this otherwise polarised field - a highly subjective and interpretive framework that has remained wholly unconsidered within forensic science. In simultaneously considering the impact of the perspective of forensics upon the broader field of jewellery design, I came to capture some of the otherwise restricted narratives of Forensic Jewellery emerging from the developing research context through a series of theoretically-informed design ‘reconstructions’: objects, concepts, and scenarios (representational, propositional, and metaphorical); educational material, and series of public engagement activities. The research thus culminates in a unique portfolio of practice – written, conceptual, and visual – with relevance to both forensic science and jewellery design history, theory, and practice. Original contributions to knowledge are demonstrated through the direct study of jewellery within real-world forensic settings through combined theory and practice, while the theoretical and conceptual debates surrounding identity, death, and the human body present within the field of jewellery design are simultaneously extended through the inclusion of forensics as a perspective. The research additionally demonstrates how the visual and tangible sensibilities of design can help to attend to otherwise challenging, emotional, or difficult subjects, capture and communicate tacit knowledge or anecdotal evidence, and ultimately contribute to the development of new and emergent research contexts.

Currently employed enhancement and detection techniques for blood are not confirmatory due to targeting generic compound classes like proteins. As such, they are not sufficiently specific and are prone to false positives. The aim of this work was to confidently determine whether a crime scene sample is in fact blood and more specifically human blood. To achieve this, an in-solution bottom up proteomic approach was developed, targeting blood-specific proteins and employing MALDI-MS. The work was developed further to devise a protocol for proteomic in situ analysis of bloodied fingermarks with MALDI-MS imaging, enabling the mapping of blood peptides to fingermark ridges and thus establishing a strong link between the suspect and the event of bloodshed. Putative peptide identifications were made for signals originating from a number of different blood-specific proteins, including not only the most abundant blood proteins like haemoglobin, but also several other proteins (e.g. complement C3 and hemopexin). To further validate the method, a blind study was conducted analysing unknown samples ranging from different species' blood and human biofluids to other substances known to produce false positives with conventional techniques. Employing MALDI-MS, it was possible to confidently identify human blood samples of up to 34 years in age. This is potentially a huge step forward in the forensic analysis of suspected blood samples and shows potential for re-analysis of cold case samples or samples of disputed origin. It was found in this study that further optimisation of the data analysis approach is required for provenance determination of animal blood samples. Traditionally, establishing the order of deposition of fingermarks associated with blood is difficult and subjective. Infinite focus microscopy was investigated for its potential to facilitate quantitative differentiation between the different deposition scenarios. However, results were highly dependent on the surface of deposition and thus the technique was shown to be unsuitable due to the wide range of surfaces potentially encountered in a forensic investigation.

Geographic profiling (GP) was originally developed to solve the problem of information overload when dealing with cases of serial crime. In criminology, the model uses spatial data relating to the locations of connected crimes to prioritise the search for the criminal's anchor point (usually a home or workplace), and is extremely successful in this field. Previous work has shown how the same approach can be adapted to biological data, but to date the model has assumed a spatially homogenous landscape, and has made no attempt to integrate more complex spatial information (eg, altitude, land use). It is this issue that I address here. In addition, I show for the first time how the model can be applied to conservation data and - taking the model back to its origins in criminology - to wildlife crime. In Chapter 2, I use the Dirichlet Process Mixture (DPM) model of geographic profiling to locate sleep trees for tarsiers in dense jungle in Indonesia, using as input the locations at which calls were recorded, demonstrating how the model can be applied to locating the nests, dens or roosts of other elusive animals and potentially improving estimates of population size, with important implications for management of both species and habitats. In Chapter 3, I show how spatial information in the form of citizen science could be used to improve a study of invasive mink in the Hebrides. In Chapter 4, I turn to the issue of 'commuter crime' in a study of poaching in Savé Valley Conservancy (SVC) in Zimbabwe, in which although poaching occurs inside SVC the majority of poachers live outside, showing how the model can be adjusted to reflect a simple binary classification of the landscape (inside or outside SVC). Finally, in Chapter 5, I combine more complex land use information (estimates of farm density) with the GP model to improve predictions of human-wildlife conflict.

The six-year investigation by West Yorkshire Police to apprehend Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, in the late 1970s and early 1980s was roundly criticised and led to a public inquiry that called for wide-ranging changes to homicide investigation. With a history already marred by corruption and miscarriages of justice, it was a pivotal case, which triggered a process of reform that has continued to the present day. Yet, flawed investigations continue, suggesting that the investigation of homicide remains fallible. Moreover, the homicide detection rate has declined since the 1960s. Despite this, homicide investigation is a topic that has been subject to minimal academic scrutiny. This study addresses this gap by exploring how and why the investigation of homicide in England and Wales has changed since the 1980s and what has been lost and/or gained as a consequence. Adopting a qualitative approach, the research is based on in-depth interviews with twenty-seven former and serving homicide detectives, the analysis of three police murder files from the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, and observations of homicide investigation and detective training. Original documentation from the Yorkshire Ripper investigation was also examined. This research has established that homicide investigation has changed almost beyond all recognition across the last four decades. This is the consequence of four central drivers: a growing preoccupation with risk; the changing political economy; reactions to miscarriages of justice or problematic cases; and advances in science and technology. The impact of change has been considerable and whilst there have been benefits, today's more risk averse homicide detectives face new challenges that are compounded by cuts to police budgets and prioritisation of other crimes such as terrorism.

Digital forensics has become an increasingly important tool in the fight against cyber and computer-assisted crime. However, with an increasing range of technologies at people's disposal, investigators find themselves having to process and analyse many systems with large volumes of data (e.g., PCs, laptops, tablets, and smartphones) within a single case. Unfortunately, current digital forensic tools operate in an isolated manner, investigating systems and applications individually. The heterogeneity and volume of evidence place time constraints and a significant burden on investigators. Examples of heterogeneity include applications such as messaging (e.g., iMessenger, Viber, Snapchat, and WhatsApp), web browsers (e.g., Firefox and Google Chrome), and file systems (e.g., NTFS, FAT, and HFS). Being able to analyse and investigate evidence from across devices and applications in a universal and harmonized fashion would enable investigators to query all data at once. In addition, successfully prioritizing evidence and reducing the volume of data to be analysed reduces the time taken and cognitive load on the investigator. This thesis focuses on the examination and analysis phases of the digital investigation process. It explores the feasibility of dealing with big and heterogeneous data sources in order to correlate the evidence from across these evidential sources in an automated way. Therefore, a novel approach was developed to solve the heterogeneity issues of big data using three developed algorithms. The three algorithms include the harmonising, clustering, and automated identification of evidence (AIE) algorithms. The harmonisation algorithm seeks to provide an automated framework to merge similar datasets by characterising similar metadata categories and then harmonising them in a single dataset. This algorithm overcomes heterogeneity issues and makes the examination and analysis easier by analysing and investigating the evidential artefacts across devices and applications based on the categories to query data at once. Based on the merged datasets, the clustering algorithm is used to identify the evidential files and isolate the non-related files based on their metadata. Afterwards, the AIE algorithm tries to identify the cluster holding the largest number of evidential artefacts through searching based on two methods: criminal profiling activities and some information from the criminals themselves. Then, the related clusters are identified through timeline analysis and a search of associated artefacts of the files within the first cluster. A series of experiments using real-life forensic datasets were conducted to evaluate the algorithms across five different categories of datasets (i.e., messaging, graphical files, file system, internet history, and emails), each containing data from different applications across different devices. The results of the characterisation and harmonisation process show that the algorithm can merge all fields successfully, with the exception of some binary-based data found within the messaging datasets (contained within Viber and SMS). The error occurred because of a lack of information for the characterisation process to make a useful determination. However, on further analysis, it was found that the error had a minimal impact on subsequent merged data. The results of the clustering process and AIE algorithm showed the two algorithms can collaborate and identify more than 92% of evidential files.

The thesis concerns an examination of victim engagement with the police investigation of domestic abuse. Notwithstanding the huge efforts being made in tackling the problem by police forces across the UK, national inspections still find that the services provided to victims are “not good enough” (HMIC, 2014, p.6). Subsequently, the thesis argues that in order to build an approach around empowering victims of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), there first needs to be further research into victim engagement with the police investigation (Birdsall et al., 2016; Hoyle & Sanders, 2000). Using the rationale, the research examined 540 cases of IPV to determine which factors were significantly associated with victim engagement. It controlled for suspect charging, cross validated the results with qualitative case file information and brought together the findings through an analysis of their co-occurrence. The process resulted in distinct themes and an overall model of victim engagement. The thesis concludes that the current risk assessment used routinely by the police to identify victim vulnerability does not take into account victim engagement. The thesis therefore proposes that the factors, themes and model of victim engagement developed throughout the thesis, as well as other means of assessing victim engagement, would need to precede the DASH risk assessment to provide a more effective evaluation of victim vulnerability. Doing so would allow the police to critically communicate and provide suitable support that is applicable to all victims of IPV. Crucially, the early indication of victim withdrawal would allow the police to identify some of the most vulnerable victims of abuse who would otherwise disengage from professional support and place themselves at greater risk of harm, injury and abuse.

This programme of research focused on incorporating Behavioural Analysis (BA) within the digital forensics investigation process. A review of previously developed digital forensics investigation models indicated a lack of sufficient consideration of the behavioural and motivational dimensions of offending, and the way in which digital evidence can be used to address these issues during the investigation process. This programme of research aimed to build on previous work by scientific researchers and investigators by developing a digital forensics investigation model which incorporates greater consideration of the behavioural and motivational implications of case-related digital evidence based on current theoretical understandings of these aspects of offending from forensic psychology. This can aid with understanding of the crime events and reconstruction, and lead to the development of more detailed models and guidelines for examining computer-facilitated interpersonal crimes. The first study employed an abductive approach to forensically analyse individual cases (real cases obtained from the Dubai Police archives) applying BA to the online Sexually Exploitative Imagery of Children (SEIC) and cyberstalking. Its aim was to investigate what BA could contribute to the digital forensics investigation of cases within these crime categories. It identified five benefits: (1) providing focus, speed and investigative directions, (2) inferring victim/offender behaviours, (3) inferring offender motivation(s), (4) identifying potential victims, and (5) eliminating suspects. This was followed by a survey study empirically examining the perceptions of national and international digital forensics practitioners regarding the use and utility of BA during the process of investigating SEIC and cyberstalking cases. The results indicated that while the majority believed that BA has potential to contribute to many aspects of digital forensics investigations, their daily investigative activities involved a limited use of this technique. The implications of the study were outlined, and emphasised the need to design a digital forensics investigation model that provides guiding steps and illustrations on how to utilise BA in digital forensics investigations. Based on the findings from the conducted studies, a digital forensics investigation model that incorporates aspects of BA was designed. It aimed to provide a pragmatic, structured, multidisciplinary approach to performing a post mortem examination, analysis, and interpretation of the content of the digital devices associated with computer-facilitated interpersonal crimes. Two comprehensive case studies were also used to illustrate the investigative importance of the model in investigating computer-facilitated interpersonal crimes.

Conventional digital forensic investigations search digital devices for specific events or specific artefacts that indicate a crime has occurred. This does fulfil the investigative need to identify a crime, but it does not attribute the user of that digital device when the crime occurred. If a crime occurs frequently, such as accessing unlawful pornography, or is an isolated event but is co-located in time with other frequently occurring events, such as the one-off sending of a harassing message, then there may be investigative value in processing the history of the device to determine if there are patterns of repetitive behaviour present at the times of interest. This research project investigates the habitual use of a digital device by analysing the Internet history that can be recovered from the physical digital device, or from logs that are retained as the device is connected to a firewall or service provider. The presumption in this project is that there is zero-knowledge of the content of the web history, page content or even an accurate classification of the nature of the sites that are visited. We propose in this research that the patterns of usage themselves are a significant indicator of who the user is, or the type of usage that is being performed. We define context analysis as the investigation not of what is contained within the artefacts, but rather the investigation of the meta-data relating to that artefact and any other similar artefacts within a proximity, be it temporal, spatial or potentially spatio-temporal. Specifically, we show in this thesis that given suitable feature selection the context analysis we define is effective at identifying patterns of habitual behaviour, as evaluated in the case of Internet history artefacts. We present as our major contributions: the methods of analysing periods of Internet history in contextual groups of sessions; the novel approaches to feature selection for the Internet history sessions; and the display of the results on a network graph such that techniques such as community detection can be used to automatically cluster the Internet history.

This study seeks to examine the extent of forensic accounting services and to investigate the determinant factors on the intention to use the services to detect and prevent fraud within English local authorities. A validated instrument was employed to survey all 353 local authorities in England of Chief Executive Officers, Directors of Finance, and internal auditors. Concepts from institutional theory, and in particular institutional isomorphism, are used as the underlying theoretical framework. The results indicate that forensic accounting services have a place in local authorities' counter-fraud work. Furthermore, both coercive and mimetic pressures were found to influence the intention to use forensic accounting services. In addition, the benefits and the costs of forensic accounting services and the strength of the in-house counter fraud resources were deemed to be associated. This study contributes to the body of knowledge of forensic accounting, fraud and management consultants and institutional theory in focusing on the utilisation of external resources to counter fraud particularly in the UK public sector. By understanding and examining the extent of forensic accounting, this study can inform the role and strategies of central government, local authorities, professional bodies, and forensic accounting providers on improving counter fraud work within local authorities. As this study used a self-administered survey, future studies could conduct interviews to explore possible explanations and interpretations to have richness of data besides include other participants from the regulators and the forensic accounting providers.

Digital forensic laboratories are failing to cope with the volume of digital evidence required to be analysed. The ever increasing capacity of digital storage devices only serves to compound the problem. In many law enforcement agencies a form of administrative triage takes place by simply dropping perceived low priority cases without reference to the data itself. Security agencies may also need days or weeks to analyse devices in order to detect and quantify encrypted data on the device. The current methodology often involves agencies creating a hash database of files where each known contraband file is hashed using a forensic hashing algorithm. Each file on a suspect device is similarly hashed and the hash compared against the contraband hash database. Accessing files via the file system in this way is a slow process. In addition deleted files or files on deleted or hidden partitions would not be found since their existence is not recorded in the file system. This thesis investigates the introduction of a system of triage whereby digital storage devices of arbitrary capacity can be quickly scanned to identify contraband and encrypted content with a high probability of detection with a known and controllable margin of error in a reasonable time. Such a system could classify devices as being worthy of further investigation or not and thus limit the number of devices being presented to digital forensic laboratories for examination. A system of triage is designed which bypasses the file system and uses the fundamental storage unit of digital storage devices, normally a 4 KiB block, rather than complete files. This allows fast sampling of the storage device. Samples can be chosen to give a controllable margin of error. In addition the sample is drawn from the whole address space of the device and so deleted files and partitions are also sampled. Since only a sample is being examined this is much faster than the traditional digital forensic analysis process. In order to achieve this, methods are devised that allow firstly the identification of 4 KiB blocks as belonging to a contraband file and secondly the classification of the block as encrypted or not. These methods minimise both memory and CPU loads so that the system may run on legacy equipment that may be in a suspect's possession. A potential problem with the existence of blocks that are common to many files is quantified and a mitigation strategy developed. The system is tested using publically available corpora by seeding devices with contraband and measuring the detection rate during triage. Results from testing are positive, achieving a 99% probability of detecting 4 MiB of contraband on a 1 TB device within the time normally assigned for the interview of the device owner. Initial testing on live devices in a law enforcement environment has shown that sufficient evidence can be collected in under four minutes from a 1TB device to allow the equipment to be seized and the suspect to be charged. This research will lead to a significant reduction in the backlog of cases in digital forensic laboratories since it can be used for triage within the laboratory as well as at the scene of crime.

Interpreting is primarily conceptualized as a form of linguistic assistance between two monolingual speakers even though many of those requiring interpreting services in public service settings have some knowledge of the language of the institution (Angermeyer 2015). A limited knowledge of the host language may be considered sufficient to communicate without assistance, insufficient and/or inadequate, or otherwise acknowledged and be combined with the on-and-off assistance of an interpreter. This is the so-called ‘stand-by mode’ of interpreting (Angermeyer 2008, p.390). The case study presented in this thesis explores interactional dynamics and participation patterns in two authentic video-recorded police interviews conducted in English with two Spanish speaking suspects and a professional interpreter, in which the stand-by mode of interpreting was used. Drawing on Conversation Analysis, Interactional Sociolinguistics and on a multimodal approach to the analysis, this thesis looks at the unique footprint of the stand-by mode of interpreting as enacted in the way the interaction is organized, the patterns of use, nonuse and initiation of interpreter-mediated sequences, the contextual conditions surrounding interpreted sequences, and the functions and demands of interpreting in the stand-by mode as a regime that is used selectively and locally. This thesis contributes to conceptualizing a new interpreting mode within the Dialogue Interpreting paradigm which is likely to become more and more relevant in today’s multilingual societies, problematizes its risks in police interviews, and highlights its potential.

Police around the world present evidence to suspects at different points during the interview. Some psychologists suggest that police should strategically delay disclosing evidence and test the truthfulness of a suspect’s account by comparing it with the evidence. Moreover, psychologists suggest interviewers who plan strategic evidence disclosure might be less guilt-presumptive about the suspect because they must consider alternative explanations of the evidence as part of their planning. In contrast, many lawyers argue that police should not strategically disclose evidence as it undermines a suspect’s fair trial rights and prevents lawyers from advising suspects effectively before the interview. To address these conflicting perspectives from the domains of psychology and law, this thesis takes an interdisciplinary approach and considers strategic evidence disclosure within the broader legal context of a suspect’s custodial detention. First, a field study of police disclosure briefings with lawyers, lawyer-client consultations, and police interviews, and a survey of lawyers highlights how lawyers rely upon the police’s evidence to advise suspects in custody. When police strategically disclose evidence, lawyers cannot provide informed legal advice and tend to advise suspects to not answer police questions. Second, three experiments and a mini meta-analysis show that generating alternative evidential explanations for criminal cases, as interviewers planning strategic evidence disclosure might do, has a very small effect, or plausibly no effect, on people’s beliefs about the suspect’s guilt. Finally, a mock crime experiment shows that, even two months after a crime, truthful suspects’ accounts fit evidence that was strategically withheld more than deceptive suspects’ accounts did. Independent laypeople from a follow-up experiment could distinguish between these truthful and deceptive accounts. Together, these findings suggest that strategic evidence disclosure could help deception detection even months after a crime, but it also impinges upon suspects’ legal rights and is unlikely to make interviewers less guilt-presumptive.