Journal of Forensic Research

Handwriting is one of the unique characteristic to represent what is in our minds, to communicate with others. Handwriting shows the true personality including behavior, emotional outlay, self-esteem, anger, imagination, honesty, fears, defenses and many other personality traits, as well as the person’s profession also. According to Profession and work patterns may vary day by day also we study the impact of handwriting in age. The Adult persons and Aged person handwriting is different it vary time to time. It is commonly known as Graphology. Graphology is the scientific method for recognizing, assessing and to understand writer’s personality through the shapes and word patterns, characteristics of the handwriting. Personality can be identified through various handwriting features such as zone, baseline, slant, size, spacing, margin, pressure, diacritics formation, speed, connecting strokes, I dot formation etc. Handwriting analysis has wide application in the various fields such psychology, medical diagnosis, recruitment of staff, career counseling, writer identification, forensics studies, Criminal investigation in some cases like forgery property theft etc. This paper provides an outline of handwriting analysis, features of handwriting, its related personality traits, also we study the few papers related to changes of handwriting in age wise, overview of the handwriting analysis system (HAS) and a literature survey of the existing papers on handwriting analysis. In this review we studied some research articles for further identification, analysis methods for study.

Objective: Although fentanyl is a prescribed drug in many countries, its analogues are not available by prescription. These potent synthetic opioids have become a new threat to public safety with their growing epidemic abuse and addiction worldwide. Therefore, a device for rapid, in-field, and in situ detection and identification of fentanyl analogues is much needed for police officers, crime scene technicians, lab medical examiners as well as public-health workers. Methods: While a direct wipe collection method for the screening of targeted fentanyl analogues by a portable device has not been reported, a portable Ion Mobility Spectrometer (IMS) was employed to assess the detection of seven fentanyl analogues in a national forensic laboratory in North America. Under a quasi-experimental design, a purposive sampling with a black box method enabled the project to be more similar to a field detection. Results: Seven fentanyl analogous samples were provided by the national forensic lab from its street collections that are mostly commonly encountered. In less than 10 seconds, the LED screen displays the name, concentration, and strength of each targeted analogue. The portable Ion Mobility Spectrometer device was able to successfully detect six out of the seven fentanyl analogues by a simple wipe (10~50 nanograms). Conclusions: With a data search algorithm in the device library, the results of these tests suggest that this novel portable IMS is able to address the challenges from their variety and speeds in illicit market, providing a new direction to safely detect and identify illicit fentanyl analogues for police officers in the field and medical examiners in the lab.

Psychoactive drugs are the drugs which affect a person's emotions, behavior and perception. Everyone knowingly, unknowingly use these drugs in day to day life. So actually what are these drugs, types of drugs need to be known. In History psychoactive drugs are used from at least 10,000 years, ago. Mainly these drugs are classified in 4 types: stimulants; depressants; narcotics; hallucinogens. How these effect on our brain is most important. These drugs are used in various sectors like for medicinal use and some just for fun. If the drug is removed what happens to patient (withdrawal symptoms) is necessary to know. There is an act which deals with these type of drug it is Psychoactive Substances Act (PSA) which comes into force on 26th May 2016. There is forensic significance also which helps in justice in criminal and civil justice system.

This review gives an overview of different features of disguised writing based on the individual characteristics of a writer. The study on disguised handwriting has been the most prominent facet in questioned document examination. Disguised handwriting has been and is still a predominant criminal activity encountered in forensic investigation. It is very critical for document examiners to elucidate the handwriting and interpret the source. Various studies and research have been conducted concerning class characteristics and individual characteristics in handwriting analysis. The main contribution of this work lies in encapsulating the methodology used, common features, the success rate of the population in disguising the handwriting, and also, the challenges faced by the document examiners in determining the authorship. The recent technological advancements discovered which can be used to perform the analysis of handwriting are also embraced.

Handwriting Analysis is a tedious and methodical process that relies on extensive knowledge and skill of individuals in letter formation having unique characteristics. In the present study, handwritings were collected from the 30 students of age group 10-16 years containing about 1800 characters of lower-case alphabets that were well acquainted with ambidextrous writings for An Assessment of Ambidextrous handwriting characters: A Future Prospect for Forensic Document Examiners. The study was carried out at Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Bhopal. Ambidextrous handwritings i.e. left-handed writings and right-handed writings were identified on the basis of handwriting characteristics of size & shape of characters and hypothesis considered that there is significant similarities in both left-hand and right hand writings (LH/RH) within the range of natural variation of the Ambidextrous writer, it means that there were no fundamental divergences amongst the writings written with both left and right hand of Ambidextrous writer.