Verbal Portrait

A verbal portrait is one of the most common methods of personal identification. It is based on a description of a person's appearance using standard verbal notations. This method is widely used in forensics, as well as in other areas where it is necessary to establish a person’s identity.

To draw up a verbal portrait, it is necessary to conduct a visual examination of a person, paying attention to his appearance, height, weight, physique, hair color, eyes, face shape, presence of scars, moles and other features. It is also necessary to consider the clothing, shoes and accessories that a person may wear.

After describing the appearance, a verbal portrait is compiled, which can be used to search for missing people, identify criminals, or simply to establish a person’s identity. A verbal portrait can be compiled either from memory or based on photographs or video recordings.

However, it is worth noting that a verbal portrait is not an accurate method of identifying a person, since each person has his own individual characteristics. Therefore, to more accurately determine identity, additional methods are used, such as DNA analysis or fingerprint comparison.

Despite this, verbal portrait remains one of the most common methods for identifying individuals in various fields.

***A verbal portrait is a method of personal identification that is based on a description of the external part of a person, including the face, head and parts of the body. Such data allows us to determine the general characteristics of a person based on his physical characteristics.***

Verbal portraits belong to the category of visual data and can be presented in the form of a verbal description or a drawing. They can be used to search for missing people, identify people after death, and for other criminological and medical purposes, such as treating psychasthenia, schizophrenia and eating disorders. There are also opportunities to use verbal portraiture to diagnose clients with attention problems or to investigate social stigma and discrimination. Depending on the circumstances, a verbal portrait can serve as the basis for fingerprint testing or DNA testing, which expands the range of the method's capabilities in establishing a person's identity.

Although verbal portraits are used in law enforcement and medical settings, there are also limitations. For example, excessive reference to physical appearance descriptions, such as the use of physical attributes, may increase the likelihood of inaccurate personality analysis. This comes in the form of personalization, where parts of the face or physical features such as wrinkles or ears are specified even in general terms. In practice, this results in much greater inaccuracy in identifying identities and may not provide a high enough level of accuracy for more complex identification cases.

In addition, when working with verbal portraits, it is very important to pay attention to the context of the description. Information about a specific person is rarely a universal method for determining whether a person belongs to a particular person or criterion. In many cases, the need for precise definitions necessitates a high degree of generalization, which helps to protect the importance of linguistic elements and the universality of the method itself. Among these elements are typical descriptions of appearance, age, race, accent, clothing style or habits that will help simplify the process of identifying a person.

Overall, despite the current limitations in the use of verbal portraits, they remain a valuable addition to the diagnosis of human biological characteristics, and with careful approach can become extremely useful tools for forensic, medical and social practice.