Practising crime scene investigation: trace and contamination in routine work

Abstract

The Crime Scene Investigator (CSI) has a distinct professional profile within the police. It is the CSI who is tasked with identifying trace at crime scenes in order to inform police investigations. Despite this significant role, little is known sociologically about the CSI's routine work. This paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork completed at the National Policing Improvement Agency's Forensic Centre, observation of CSIs at real crime scenes and interview data to consider the CSI's practices surrounding trace at volume crime scenes. It foregrounds the work that take place in transforming crime scene trace into admissible evidence or objects for laboratory analysis and the processes of identifying meaningful trace, central to CSI claims of unique expertise. Yet beyond the crime scene and police environment, it is the CSI's ability to record their adherence to prescriptive contamination avoidance procedures which is of paramount importance. This paper demonstrates the agency involved in making sense of crime scenes and the differing ways the CSI and CSI work are understood across police and courtroom environments.

The progressive opening of forensic science toward criminological concerns

“…Indeed, CSE imagine where the offender entered into contact with the entities that were present at the scene when the activity took place. When interviewed, CSE emphasize the need of 'thinking like an offender' and of understanding the 'big picture' to collect relevant traces able to support investigative and court processes (Wyatt, 2014) They must conceive the behavior of the offender in the immediate physical and social environment to find these 'contact points' (Barclay, 2009): what were the obstacles to be overcome? Were there guardians protecting the target?…”

Understanding crime scene examination through an ethnographic lens

“…Wyatt () draws on these ethnographic observations to argue that, at least in volume crime scenes, the paperwork has the potential to black box the legitimacy of the trace they packaged and removed from the scene. He stresses the importance of paperwork in claiming CSE work and resulting artifacts as objective, and the ease with which this can be undermined if any small, basic administrative issues are identified.…”

“…Ethnographic methods allow us to see and acknowledge the many interconnected practices and processes that take place, often hidden by the claims we make about the world around us and usually missing from the quantitative accounts of policing, formal training manuals and reported outcomes of policing practices. Ethnography then has much to offer in our understanding of the crime scene examiner (CSE), an actor who has been described as occupying an often contested landscape between science, law enforcement and the public (Kruse, ; Wilson‐Kovacs, ; Wyatt, ).…”

“…However, such accounts do not (a) facilitate an understanding of the complex negotiations and everyday practices that take place in the performance of crime scene examination, (b) examine the place of the CSE within investigations and wider police and scientific work, or (c) discuss the roles and effects of technological development on the CSEs skills portfolio. In this article, we draw on ethnographic findings from our published (Wilson‐Kovacs, ; Wyatt, ) and unpublished research from England and Wales, as well as that from other countries to explore these themes and demonstrate the utility of ethnographic methods in the study of the CSE as an important actor within the criminal justice system.…”

The polymorphism of crime scene investigation: An exploratory analysis of the influence of crime and forensic intelligence on decisions made by crime scene examiners

“…When taken into consideration, the contribution of forensic science to crime scene investigation focuses on the expectation of the Justice System in terms of the production of evidence dedicated to a court. Validity and limit of technologies, the chain of custody, or contaminations and pollutions constitute main concerns [21]. Accreditation of procedures, validation of techniques, and certification of CSEs are seen as key objectives to reach in order to increase confidence of the Justice System in the information it uses for its decisions [22].…”