AC1.1
Police officers are one of the first people to be called onto a crime scene and they’re role is
to start the investigation. They also need to make sure that the public are safe and anyone
who is injured is attended to. In an investigation, they need to make sure that they need to
make sure that the evidence in the crime scene is conserved and they must make sure that
the evidence isn’t contaminated. Police officers are important in an investigation because of
the ‘Golden Hour’, which is the time period straight after a crime scene and police officers
are the ones who have to preserve the scene and take witness statements and tend to
victims, because if they wait past this point, the memory of what happened at the crime
scene may deteriorate. Although, the police have been criticised for failing to properly
secure crime scenes and have failed to investigate crimes, such as domestic abuse and hate
crimes. They’ve also had instances of not being able to properly handle evidence and
particular officers have had discriminatory attitudes. An example of this is the Macpherson
report, which indicated the institutional racism of the Metropolitan Police during the
Stephen Lawrence case. The Police are also available 24/7, however, due to the budget cuts,
there are less officers being trained, meaning there is limit on the availability.
Crime Scene investigators are civilians that have specialist training and possibly a science
degree. Their role is to collect and process evidence found in crime scenes, in order to do
this, they need to be able to preserve evidence do that it is uncontaminated, because if
evidence is found to be contaminated, it becomes inadmissible. They also do things such as
photographing crime scenes and key evidence, recovering physical and biological evidence,
helping police investigators with physical evidence and giving in evidence to court. CSI are
effective because the effectively provide links from suspects to crime scenes and victims and
evidence can also provide evidence to prove that a suspect is innocent. However, if
evidence is recorded or collected incorrectly, or leading it to be contaminated could lead to
an innocent person being convicted, or a guilty person being let free.
Forensic Scientists use their scientific knowledge and apply it to crime and also the legal
system. They use their knowledge to analyse evidence found in a crime scene, such as
samples of blood to find a specific DNA sample that matches to a sample of their suspect. A
reason to why forensic scientists are effective is because their expertise is essential in
complex cases when the criminal has specialist knowledge. However, forensic scientists are
highly qualified and therefore very expensive, and contamination of evidence can happen
when the evidence is being examined by scientists. For example, in the Adam Scott case.
Adam Scott was convicted of rape, however, he claimed to be hundreds of miles away from
the crime scene, however, the forensic lab that was in charge of analysing the evidence had
Scott’s DNA from a spitting incident, however, the tray that was used to analyse Scott’s DNA
was reused for the rape case, so the evidence was contaminated with Scott’s DNA, which
presented him as guilty, however he was later released because it was realised that that
there had been a contamination of evidence.
Pathologists are doctors that specialise in causes of disease and death, and also the
examination of dead bodies and tissues in autopsies. If in a crime scene, homicide is
suspected, forensic pathologists will assist the police in finding out the most likely cause of
death. At the autopsy, the pathologist will make a detailed examination of the body for
,clues of foul play, they may also examine the organs of the dead body and take samples of
the tissue for laboratory analysis, and inform the police on how to recover the body from
the crime scene in order to make sure that important trace evidence isn’t lost. A ‘defence’
post mortem can be carried out by a different pathologist on behalf of the defendant, and
when it is finished, the pathologist will make a report and give it to the coroner and a
witness statement for the police, they may also give advice to the police and the prosecutor
during the investigation and give any evidence to court. The reason pathologists are good is
because they can produce conclusive evidence to establish the reason and the time of
death, and this can help prove the innocence or guilt of a suspect, although, there are a
shortage of qualified pathologist, as there are only 35 Home Office registered forensic
pathologists across England and Wales, which can delay an investigation, and as highly
trained specialists, forensic pathology services can be expensive in an investigation because
pathologists are highly paid. A case that highlights the issues with pathologists is the Gareth
Williams case. A former forensic pathologist, Dr Freddy Patel, conducted an autopsy on
Gareth Williams, and Dr Patel made the conclusion that Williams died of natural causes,
however, multiple experts concluded that Williams was murdered, and that Patel failed at
examining the key evidence. Patel was then struck off the UK medical register due to
misconduct.
The Crown Prosecution Service is an independent prosecution service that has regional
offices across England and Wales. It has a panel of over 2000 solicitors and barristers with
other staff to handle approximately ½ million criminal cases each year. They advise police on
cases that have possible prosecution and they review cases that are submitted to see
whether it’s worth to prosecute, they make decisions about prosecuting cases by using tests
to see if there’s enough evidence, and with more serious cases, CPS will decide whether
they should charge the suspect. They will also prepare cases for court hearings, collect
evidence from police and disclose material for the defence. They can also present
prosecution cases to court, while using their own prosecutors, and also self-employed
barristers when they are dealing with complicated cases. The CPS also have specialist
divisions that deal with prosecutions that use specialist knowledge, such as fraud. The CPS is
a good thing because before they were set up in 1986, the police had to investigate, charge
and prosecute cases, which ended up leading to bias, and because the CPS independently
assess evidence and decide whether they want to prosecute or not, it prevents the police
from victimising individuals, and because they are a national organisation that are
responsible for prosecutions means that justice is more equal for everyone. Although, The
CPS do have the power to reject a police’s request to prosecute if they want, for example,
they could reject to prosecute because they think that the evidence isn’t enough.
, AC 1.2 Assess the usefulness of investigative techniques in criminal investigations
There are multiple forensic techniques that can be used when conducting a criminal
investigation. Forensic techniques often involve recovering evidence that has biological
traces and analysing it in a Lab. There are multiple examples of evidence that can be
considered as forensic, for example, semen, hair and blood. A technique that uses forensics
is DNA Profiling. DNA Profiling is when the DNA evidence that is found in a crime scene is
analysed and is compared to the samples that are already identified to find a match. This is
useful because blood relatives’ DNA profiles are similar and because of this, a match to a
DNA sample can be found easily. A good example of DNA profiling being useful in an
investigative situation is the case of Colette Aram, who was raped and murdered in 1983,
but during that period, DNA profiling didn’t exist, but, the police developed a profile of the
killer in 2008 thanks to the advancement of DNA technology, and the killer’s son had later
been arrested and his DNA sample was taken and it was then found out that both these
profiles slightly matched. It turned out the killer’s father, Paul Hutchinson, was the one who
murdered Colette and was then arrested and convicted of murder. This shows that DNA
profiling is useful because it’s able to assist in identifying suspects, although, there are
problems with using forensic techniques. One problem is that the forensic techniques is
letting the evidence become contaminated, which can identify the wrong people in an
investigation, also known as miscarriages of justice, for example, the case of Adam Scott,
who was charged with rape and had to spend 5 months in prison because of a contaminated
DNA sample. Forensic techniques are most effective in a laboratory because in this situation,
you are able to initially analyse forensic evidence, which can help you identify suspects in
your investigation. Forensic techniques are still effective in a crime scene because that is
where you extract the evidence for analysis, however, in a street, forensic techniques are
useless because in a street, there are multiple pieces of DNA traces that may not be related
to the crime investigation at all. Forensic techniques are most useful in violent crime
situations because in a violent crime scene, there are often lots of samples of forensic
evidence you can find which will help identify the main suspect for your case, however,
forensic evidence not be very effective during the investigation of e-crime, mainly because
you cannot analyse forensic evidence when the crime is occurring using technology.
Intelligence databases can also be used as an investigative technique. During the
investigation of a case, police officers can access different databases which hold information
that has been obtained from multiple sources and can use this during their investigation.
One database that can be accessed is the Police National Computer (PNC) which holds
multiple different databases that store the details of over 12 million people’s arrests, their
convictions, and their fingerprints with the National DNA database. It holds vehicle
registration data and the data on 48 million people that own a driving license and the PNC
holds information on missing and wanted people. A reason that Intelligence databases are
useful for investigations is because when the police need certain information on suspects,
they may be able to access information about them through their databases, however,
some information in the databases may be deemed as bias, for example, a database called
the Gangs Matrix was criticised as being discriminating black people and due to that, in
2021, the police ended up removing over 1,000 young black men from the database. The
information in those databases could also end up in the wrong hands, for example, in 2017,
the Gangs Matrix was subject to leaks and information, including names and addresses, of
