Crime Science

Indoor scenes will quite naturally be searched on a room-by-room basis, with each room subdivided as necessary into squares or sectors and, where desirable, each sector further subdivided. This is called the zone method

Crime-scene investigation consists of certain preliminanes, followed by documentation, then the collection and preservation of the evidence. Only then may crime reconstruction be possible. Finally, certain legal considerations must be followed

When Charles E. O’Hara states in his Fundamentals of Criminal Investigation that “there is not only the effect of the criminal on the scene to be considered, but also the manner in which the scene may have imparted traces to the criminal,”

these words from an article in the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science: “The scientist is indistinguishable from the common man in his sense of evidence, except that the scientist is more careful. The increased care is not a revision of evidentiary standards, but only the more patient and systematic collection and use of what anyone would deem to be evidence.”64

For this reason, they conclude that “it is desirable for the criminalist to be something of a scientific generalist.”

Although there is the tendency today for criminalists to specialize, Cunliffe and Piazza caution that “it is a mistake for a laboratory to become over-specialized

The earliest forensic scientists were medical men, who logically happened to be among the first on the scene of a death. The earliest record of physicians applying medical knowledge to the solving of crimes is the Chinese book Hsi Duan Yu (“The Washing Away of Wrongs”) dating from 1248.

The Court offered certain guidelines for gauging the validity of scientific evidence, emphasizing flexibility: the technique or theory must be testable and must have in fact been tested; it must have been subjected to peer review and the publication process; standards must exist and be maintained that control the operation of the technique; and the method or theory must have been widely accepted within the relevant scientific discipline.15

Kirk raises an interesting point, noting that “for the criminalist to use the word ‘identification’ in its accepted context is to admit that there is no reason for his special existence…

Hence forensic science is a broad term that embraces all of the scientific disciplines that are utilized in investigations with the goal of bringing criminals to justice. The American Academy of Forensic Sciences defines it as “the study and practice of the application of science to the purposes of the law.”3