Criminal Investigation Essay Example
Crime Scene Investigation
Summer Crouch
Indiana Business College
Mr. Walker 12/10/2008 History “The history of crime scene investigation includes criminology. Criminology is a field of social sciences that study crime and criminal behavior that cause social phenomena with direct impacts on society. As a result of the efforts to understand this, researchers from other academic fields for example anthropology, psychiatry, medicine, etc have acquired a great amount of theories. One of these theories came from what is known as the classical school. A product of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, the classical school theory, viewed criminality as a result of free will and personal choice, never considering psychological reasons of occurrence. Emphasizing on social and legal definitions of a crime, society’s “best interest” and the role of laws in protecting the common good. Another school is the positive school, which believed in making a system to scientific investigation, consolidating scientific methods and most importantly, observing the causes of human behavior. It wished to explain behaviors as human phenomena whose causes were identified in human nature and/or social determinants.” (Lerner, 2006). Without evidence there’s no proof of who or how a crime was committed. Forensic science started in Europe in the mid 1800’s after the Industrial Revolution because there were more and more people that were coming into the cities which caused the crime rate to rise. The first forensic science lab in the United States was established in 1924 by two men named Calvin Goddard and August Vollmer. However, Edmund Locard had already established the first forensic science lab in Lyon, France where he studied and became France’s own “Sherlock Holmes”. Edmund Locard came up with the concept that everything that is touched leaves a mark. This became known as the Locard Exchange
Summer Crouch
Indiana Business College
Mr. Walker 12/10/2008 History “The history of crime scene investigation includes criminology. Criminology is a field of social sciences that study crime and criminal behavior that cause social phenomena with direct impacts on society. As a result of the efforts to understand this, researchers from other academic fields for example anthropology, psychiatry, medicine, etc have acquired a great amount of theories. One of these theories came from what is known as the classical school. A product of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, the classical school theory, viewed criminality as a result of free will and personal choice, never considering psychological reasons of occurrence. Emphasizing on social and legal definitions of a crime, society’s “best interest” and the role of laws in protecting the common good. Another school is the positive school, which believed in making a system to scientific investigation, consolidating scientific methods and most importantly, observing the causes of human behavior. It wished to explain behaviors as human phenomena whose causes were identified in human nature and/or social determinants.” (Lerner, 2006). Without evidence there’s no proof of who or how a crime was committed. Forensic science started in Europe in the mid 1800’s after the Industrial Revolution because there were more and more people that were coming into the cities which caused the crime rate to rise. The first forensic science lab in the United States was established in 1924 by two men named Calvin Goddard and August Vollmer. However, Edmund Locard had already established the first forensic science lab in Lyon, France where he studied and became France’s own “Sherlock Holmes”. Edmund Locard came up with the concept that everything that is touched leaves a mark. This became known as the Locard Exchange