Forensic speech science is an unregulated sector, suffering from the effects of privatisation and budget cuts. DJs or CD shop owners are acting as experts in courts, side by side with university professors with years of experience. Attempts by the EU to enforce quality standards are in a dead end. And there is division even within the expert community. Linguists and engineers disagree on methods, and the use of voice databases and consistent statistics is still limited.
The project's database of court cases where voice recordings were used can be found here.
Journalist Michele Catanzaro won the 2016 European Science Writer of the Year award for this project.
Photo: Snapshots from a forensic speech laboratory © Gianluca Battista
