Furthering understanding of forensic units: a detailed examination of Knoxville police department's crime scene unit.

program evaluation;forensics;policing;crime scene units;forensic standards;tennessee

Cassandra Christina Rausch

University:University of Louisville

Department:Criminal Justice

关键词: program evaluation;    forensics;    policing;    crime scene units;    forensic standards;    tennessee;   

Others  :  https://ir.library.louisville.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4257&context=etd

美国|英语

来源: The Universite of Louisville's Institutional Repository

【 摘 要 】

Throughout the past three decades, the criminal justice system has decidedly employed new technologies for the purposes of establishing guilt or innocence. Forensic science, with its synthesis of scientific methodology and investigative considerations of law enforcement, ushered in the development of DNA profiling and forever changed the process of crime scene investigation.This shift in focus also led to a shift in the individuals involved in investigation, producing the widespread formation of stand-alone crime scene units. Utilizing both civilian and sworn employees of a law enforcement agency, these units became responsible for the documentation, collection, and preservation of evidence that would later make or break a criminal case in the courtroom. The transition with the increased use of forensic science resulted in a shift in legal approaches and methodologies that began to place more value on physical rather than circumstantial evidence; in due time, “scientific proof” became a necessity in the courtroom and led to an indispensable reliance on crime scene units. Yet, for all the focus placed on forensic science following the advent of DNA profiling, little attention has been given to the crime scene units responsible for this evidence collection and preservation. A lack of national standards for crime scene units and the nature of law enforcement organizations in the United States resulted in the independent development of units each with independently developed standard operations, collection procedures, and preservation methods, with no uniform professional standards as to how this crucial evidence should be handled. The purpose of the current study was to fill this gap through the exploration, collection and analysis of data related to the operations of the forensics unit of the Knoxville Police Department. The data was collected as part of a formative program evaluation with both process and outcome components. Findings from this research were compared to the standards recommended by the National Institute of Justice (2009), as well as to standards developed through prior research on characteristics that resulted in effective crime scene investigation (Kelty, Julian, & Robertson, 2011; Ludwig, Edgar, & Maguire, 2014). Lastly, findings of the current research were compared to those of Rausch’s (2015) study that assessed the standards, education levels, training, and national certification of forensics units across the United States. Comparing the current and previous data allowed recommendations to be developed that would contribute to improvement in crime scene unit operations. The program evaluation that sought to identify key components