Current issues of forensic forensic examination of documents
Authors: Hora І. , Kolesnyk V. , Popovich І. 
Published: April 2023

The study aims at analyzing contemporary options of conducting certain types of forensic technical examination of documents and identifying challenges that occur in relation to conducting this examination. The article discusses theoretical and methodological regularities which correlate with the advanced achievements of science and technology forming the basis of the technical investigation of documents. One of pertinent issues of contemporary expert practice is specifying the subject area of each type of forensic examinations and a range of tasks solved by them. It is substantiated that the establishment of the authenticity of a document is a legal issue and is tackled by the investigator and court. A forensic expert in all cases establishes the fact of complete or partial forgery based on examining the signs of such a document. There were explored suggestions, presented in scientific publications of recent years, concerning the identification of the date of creating the document, peculiarities of studying documents in which the requisites are written using computer technologies. The improvement of materials and technologies employed for producing documents requires expanding the range of use of special knowledge in this field for fully comprehensive expert examination of this category of objects. The reliability of the obtained results and conclusions is ensured by a set of general scientific and specific scientific methods. In particular, the main ones include the general dialectical method of scientific cognition of phenomena, processes and objects, modeling and forecasting, formal-logical, system-structural methods.

            Scientific methods of formal logic became the methodological basis of the article. They were applied during the study of materials of the expert proceedings, reference materials, scientific approaches of scientists and practitioners on issues covered by the subject of the article. The system-structural method made it possible to determine the place of forensic technical examination of documents in the system of forensic examinations and forensic document science. The system-structural method enabled the determination of the place of forensic technical examination of documents in the system of forensic examinations and forensic documentation studies. 

           There were analyzed forensic expert practices of carrying out forensic examinations and expert study of documents and attention was focused on the need for complex use of special knowledge in the field of forensic technical examination of documents, examination of materials, substances and items, and computer-technical examination in the course of their carrying out. It has been concluded that there is the need to develop appropriate expertise research methods for new types of documents produced by means of advanced computer technologies.

         Emphasis is placed on the peculiarities of conducting examinations related to establishing the date of producing the document, the fact of adding individual details using dyes similar in color and composition to those employed for making the original text, etc. Posing the question to the expert about establishing the authenticity of the document submitted for examining was found to be groundless.