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Short abstract:

This paper examines the collaboration between the Berlin Lautarchiv, police, & prison administration for the 1926 Berlin Police Exhibition and investigates how “voice portraits” of prisoners were promoted as potential forensic evidence, tracing the scientific claims and strategic interests involved.

Long abstract:

In the context of the 1926 Berlin Police Exhibition, a collaboration developed between the Lautarchiv (then Lautabteilung), Prussian police, and prison administration. This paper discusses how sound recordings of prisoners, framed as “voice portraits”, were presented as potential forensic evidence. It discusses the bid to promote sound recording and reproduction technology as a promising tool for police investigation and establish the voice records not only as biometric identifiers to be cataloged in police databases but also as evidence of a prisoner’s character and inclinations. It ties the claim to the evidential characteristics of the voice to the idea of “anthropophonetics”, proposed by the Lautabteilung’s director Doegen as a science in its own right, based on phonetic examination. Bringing together a range of archival documents, I consider the emphasis on technological innovation and expert skill in the effort to create scientific credibility and legitimacy to appeal to the modernizing ambitions of the Prussian police. I connect the recording project to a broader shift to prioritize “the criminal’s character” rather than “the character of the crime”, as discernible in the reforms of the Prussian penitentiary system, the increasing institutionalization of “criminal biology”, and specifically, the intensifying discourse around so-called “habitual criminals”. Noting that many of the recorded inmates were arrested for property crimes, I link the claims about properties of the voice and proper technique to the challenges to property relations emerging in the prisoners’ recordings.