Investigating A Crime Scene

Any criminal investigation implies the official effort undertaken to find out facts about a crime that has been committed. A person may be caught by a law enforcement officer at the scene of crime or he may confess or he may be convicted in court through a trial. The latter requires a criminal investigation that can identify him as a suspect and then collect the necessary evidence to prosecute him in court. The motive behind the crime committed at times helps to nab the criminal while at other times it remains hidden even after identifying the culprit.

Criminal investigations are generally performed by the police force and criminal investigation techniques are varied involving other agencies and scientific procedures like fingerprint analysis and DNA samples. On many occasions help is even sought from seasoned criminals called informants who are willing to extend their services to lessen their punishments. Certain portions of an investigation may need specialized knowledge and training which the police personnel lack and here third party help is sought for instance in DNA tests. A criminal investigation may not always be conclusive and a lack of evidence may even lead to the suspect being discharged if not proved guilty. The judge takes his decision after thoroughly examining the evidence produced in court and if proper methods are not followed, this evidence stands null and void.

Criminal investigation procedures usually involve the following steps:

• The criminal investigator is called at the scene of crime to analyze any homicide case, or break-ins and assaults. Here the common methods undertaken for collecting evidence are taking prints and photographs and gathering evidence that is lying around the crime scene.
  
• One officer secures the place where it all happened and takes witness accounts while a technician investigates any unusual markings and bloodstains.
  
• Sophisticated equipments today make it easy to collect DNA samples from victims at the scene of crime and these are then matched with the already existing samples in a national database.
  
• Modern software and scientific techniques allow the investigators to make use of digital reenactment programs to reconstruct the crime scene for getting answers and the Internet is the greatest medium for tracking down possible suspects.

The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) is under the aegis of all territorial police forces in the U.K. and other Commonwealth countries and comprises of plainclothes policemen who work as detectives. They need to have been in the police service for a minimum period of two years and trained specially before getting transferred to this branch. Such officers typically investigate major crimes as murder, rape, severe cases of assault and fraud detection and act upon intelligence received to build up a case that may lead to possible arrest of the suspects.