Bex et al. on A Hybrid Formal Theory of Arguments, Stories, and Criminal Evidence

Dr. Floris J. Bex of The University of Dundee Argumentation Research Group, and colleagues, have published A Hybrid Formal Theory of Arguments, Stories, and Criminal Evidence, forthcoming in Artificial Intelligence and Law. Here is the abstract:

This paper presents a theory of reasoning with evidence in order to determine the facts in a criminal case. The focus is on the process of proof, in which the facts of the case are determined, rather than on related legal issues, such as the admissibility of evidence. In the literature, two approaches to reasoning with evidence can be distinguished, one argument-based and one story-based. In an argument-based approach to reasoning with evidence, the reasons for and against the occurrence of an event, e.g., based on witness testimony, are central. In a story-based approach, evidence is evaluated and interpreted from the perspective of the factual stories as they may have occurred in a case, e.g., as they are defended by the prosecution. In this paper, we argue that both arguments and narratives are relevant and useful in the reasoning with and interpretation of evidence. Therefore, a hybrid approach is proposed and formally developed, doing justice to both the argument-based and the narrative-based perspective. By the formalization of the theory and the associated graphical representations, our proposal is the basis for the design of software developed as a tool to make sense of the evidence in complex cases.

Click here for Dr. Bex’s earlier post on this topic at the VoxPopuLII blog.

New on VoxPopuLII: Bex on Argument Mapping and Storytelling in Criminal Cases

Dr. Floris Bex of the University of Dundee’s Argumentation Research Group has posted Argument Mapping and Storytelling in Criminal Cases, on the VoxPopuLII Blog, published by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School.

Dr. Bex’s post presents an innovative approach to organizing and analyzing criminal evidence. This new theory combines methods of argument analysis with those of the study of narrative. Dr. Bex also describes key examples of software used in argument mapping and narrative analysis, as well as a software application called AVERS that enables one to diagram both stories and arguments about criminal evidence.

Dr. Bex’s post will be of interest to those who work in artificial intelligence and law, those who practice criminal law, those who study legal evidence or legal argument, and those with an interest in narrative and the law.

Van den Braak on Sensemaking Software for Crime Analysis

Dr. Susan van den Braak has published her Ph.D. dissertation, entitled Sensemaking Software for Crime Analysis (2010).

Dr. van den Braak will defend this dissertation on 15 March 2010 at Senaatszaal van het Academiegebouw, Universiteit Utrecht, Domplein 29, Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Here is the abstract:

Criminal investigation is a difficult and laborious process that is prone to error as teams of investigators may be subject to tunnel vision, groupthink, and confirmation bias. As a result, miscarriages of justice may ensue. To overcome these problems, in the Dutch law enforcement organization, crime analysts have been given a more important role. It is now their task to critically evaluate the investigation that is going on. They have to make sense of the vast amount of evidence available in a case by generating plausible scenarios about what might have happened. Subsequently, they have to assess the quality of their scenarios and choose the best alternative. Due to the difficulty of this process, a great need exists for software that supports crime analysts in their task. However, current support tools for crime analysis do not allow analysts to record scenarios and their relation to the evidence and as a result the most important part of the analysis process remains in the analysts’ minds. Therefore, they may benefit from so-called sensemaking systems that allow them to make their reasoning process explicit by visualizing scenarios and the reasons why these scenarios are supported by the evidence. Nevertheless, such sensemaking tools for crime analysis are relatively sparse and often do not incorporate a logical model of reasoning with evidence in the context of crime analysis. This thesis aims to fill this gap by proposing sensemaking software that has specifically been designed for crime analysis. Such a tool should be rationally well-founded, natural, useful, usable, and effective. To this aid, a proof-of-concept application called AVERs (Argument Visualization for Evidential Reasoning based on stories) was built that implements a rationally well-founded and natural model of the reasoning that takes place in crime analysis. In this way a standard of rational reasoning is encouraged and errors may be reduced. Using AVERs analysts are able to create visual representations of scenarios and evidential arguments. Scenarios are represented as causal networks of events, while evidential arguments are arguments based on the evidential data in the case. Such arguments are based on argumentation schemes that often come with critical questions. These questions make the analysts more aware of possible sources of doubt and encourage them to critically examine the evidence. Evidential arguments can be used to support or attack scenarios with the available evidence. In this way, this software allows the analysts to reason about scenarios and to critically evaluate them. Moreover, it provides features that can be used to compare alternative scenarios. A series of empirical studies has confirmed that the design and implementation of AVERs fulfills all five criteria to a certain degree. This means that it is useful to crime analysts and satisfies their desires, while it may improve their analysis of the case and the communication of their results to the investigators working on the case, and ensures that rational analyses are performed. Therefore, through this software in the future biases in the crime analysis process may be avoided.

Bex on Argument & Narrative in Criminal Evidence

[NOTE: Updated on 16 November 2009 to link to the long version of the abstract of Dr. Bex's dissertation, and to link to the Making Sense of Evidence Project.]

Dr. Floris Bex of the University of Dundee Argumentation Research Group, will defend his Ph.D. dissertation, entitled Evidence for a Good Story – A Hybrid Theory of Arguments, Stories and Criminal Evidence, on October 29, 2009, at 4:15 p.m., at Aula van het Academiegebouw, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Broerstraat 5, Groningen. Please RSVP to Dr. Bex if you plan to attend. Click here for the long version of the abstract of the dissertation. Here is the short version of the abstract:

“The subject of this thesis is reasoning with evidence to establish the facts in criminal cases. In al legal context, the study of evidence is often equated with the study of the ‘law of evidence’, for example, the legal rules of evidence that govern which types of evidence are legally valid or admissible. However, a large part of the study of evidence constitutes the study of the ‘rational process of proof,’ which concerns the facts of the case rather than the legal specifics. The reasoning in the process of proof, which is discussed in chapter 2, involves constructing, testing and justifying complex hypotheses about what happened in a case using evidence (e.g. witness statements, tangible evidence such as a knife or blood) and general commonsense knowledge (e.g. generalizations such as ‘witnesses under oath usual human behaviour).”

Some of the research for Dr. Bex’s dissertation was conducted in connection with the project: Making Sense of Evidence: Software Support for Crime Investigations, and utilizes “a sense-making and visualization tool for Dutch police analysts called AVERS.”

Congratulations to Dr. Bex.