9781422273401

Forensic Science and Criminal Investigation

The world of criminal investigation has long captivated the imaginations of people around the world. Depictions of detectives and crime solvers have shown up in books, movies, and television shows for decades, from Truman Capote’s novel In Cold Blood to the many iterations of the hit television series Law & Order . All of these fictionalized depictions rely on the elements of modern forensic science. But while books, movies, and television shows are designed primarily to entertain (and neatly solve a case in a given timeframe), the reality of criminal investigations contains many people and processes to solve a crime effectively. Further, investigations can take months or even years to solve, if they are definitively solved at all. A Short History of Forensics While today we think of forensics as a modern field of investigative study and techniques, people have utilized forensic investigation to solve crimes for centuries. Even in ancient times, people determined the manner of a death according to where a victim was found and the condition of the body. The ancient Chinese, for example, attempted to define the difference between a natural death and a death that occurred through suspicious activity or criminal intent, with the author Sung Tz’u writing the first text used as a guide by coroners. By the second half of the 1700s, scientists began developing techniques that allowed them to use chemistry to test for poisons and chemicals in the blood and other bodily fluids. Fingerprint patterns became a field of study in the early 1800s, though it took several decades for fingerprint analysis to become a means of personal identification and, as an extension, criminal investigations. Investigative analysis of hair and blood samples, bullet comparisons, documents and forgery, and photography continued to develop through the 19th and early 20th centuries, until what we would today consider modern forensic science became a key component of criminal investigations.

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