Conclusion Scale
Definition
The structured verbal scale recommended by FISWG, ranging from Exclusion through Inconclusive to Identification, used to communicate the weight of facial comparison evidence to courts and investigators.
- Issuing body
- FISWG
- Domain
- Facial image comparison
- Range
- Exclusion through Inconclusive to Identification
- Purpose
- Communicate weight of comparison evidence to courts
Common questions
How does the FISWG conclusion scale for facial comparison relate to the ABFO scale used for bite marks?+
Both are structured verbal scales built around the same basic idea, categorising an opinion from exclusion through an inconclusive middle ground to identification, but they are maintained by different working groups for different disciplines and are not interchangeable, each reflecting the specific error rates and validation studies of its own field.
Why does the FISWG scale include an inconclusive category rather than forcing every comparison to a match or non-match?+
Facial comparison accuracy varies with image quality, pose, expression and occlusion, and forcing a binary conclusion when the evidence does not support one would overstate certainty. The inconclusive category lets an examiner honestly report that the available material does not permit a reliable identification or exclusion.
Related terms
- Facial Mapping
- The term used primarily in the UK and Australia for the forensic comparison of facial images. Now largely superseded in international literature...
- FISWG
- The Facial Identification Scientific Working Group, a US-originated but internationally engaged body that produced guidelines for forensic facial comparison, including a standardised...
- Holistic Assessment
- Evaluation of the face as an integrated whole rather than as a sum of parts, drawing on the examiner's trained perceptual processing...
- Morphological Analysis
- The systematic comparison of qualitative facial feature shapes from a standardised feature list; the primary method in ENFSI BPM facial image comparison,...
- Photo-Anthropometric Overlay
- A technique that aligns and scales two facial images and computes proportional distances between anatomical landmarks, used when direct feature comparison is...