Criminal Investigation

An Introduction to Principles and Practice

Peter Stelfox

• Publisher: Willan
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781134733279
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Criminal investigation has a high profile in the media, and has attracted widespread interest. Within the police it has been a rapidly developing field. Important scientific and technological developments have had a considerable impact on practice, and significant steps have been taken in the direction of professionalizing the whole process of investigation. Within police studies criminal investigation has now emerged as an important sub-discipline.

Criminal Investigation provides an authoritative and highly readable introduction to the subject from somebody ideally placed to write about it, focusing on how police practitioners carry out investigations. It looks systematically at the purpose and role of criminal investigation; the legal, policy and organizational context in which criminal investigation takes place; the evidence and information that criminal investigators seek; the process and methods of criminal investigation; the knowledge, techniques and decision making abilities that practitioners require to carry out criminal investigations; how and why it is that some crimes are solved and some are not; the supervision of criminal investigation; and a review of some of the key contemporary issues that have a bearing on criminal investigation.

Criminal Investigation will be essential reading for both policing practitioners (student police officers as well as officers taking higher levels of CPD within the police service) and students taking courses in criminal investigation, forensic sciences and investigation, police studies and police science, and other courses where a knowledge of criminal investigation is required.

Chapter 1

Crime and investigative practice

Introduction

Criminal investigation is one of the key functions of the police service. It contributes to the achievement of a wide range of objectives at every level of policing, from the investigation of anti-social behaviour in neighbourhoods to international counter-terrorism operations. Whatever level of offending it is directed at, criminal investigation involves locating, gathering and using information to bring offenders to justice, or to achieve one of the other objectives set for it by the police service, such as victim care, intelligence gathering or managing crime risks.

Despite the importance of criminal investigation, there has been little study of how it is practised by individual investigators and how the knowledge, skills and understanding they bring to the task might be improved. Indeed, the recognition that the scope and complexity of criminal investigation is such that it requires a range of knowledge, skills and understanding which is distinct from other areas of police work is relatively recent. The professional model within the police service has always been that of the ‘omni-competent constable’. This was held to be an individual who could turn their hands to any of the many problems that present themselves to the police service to be dealt with. Criminal investigation was seen as being simply one of these problems and all officers were expected to be able to carry it out as part of their routine duties. While police forces had a Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of one sort or another to deal with the most serious crimes, they rarely constituted more than 10 per cent of a force’s staff and the dominant view was that investigation required few skills in addition to those possessed by all officers.

This may have worked well enough in an era when the legal and technical aspects of criminal investigation were relatively straightforward and when there was a general consensus in society about the objective of criminal investigation and the means by which it was to be achieved. However, during the last quarter of a century, the legal framework of criminal investigation has changed beyond recognition and now encompasses a range of legislation which must be mastered by investigators if they are to carry out their role effectively within the law. Scientific and technical advances have been equally great and mean that investigators must have a far broader knowledge of the techniques of investigation than was previously required.

The objective of criminal investigation has also changed. At one time, its sole purpose was to bring offenders to justice and investigative practice was shaped only by the need to identify suspects and gather evidence to support prosecutions. Now, victim care, community reassurance, intelligence gathering, disruption of criminal networks and managing a wide range of crime risks are also seen as fundamental objectives of the process. All of these developments have increased the complexity of the task of criminal investigation and mean that those who engage in it require high levels of professional competence if they are to perform their role effectively.

The police service’s capacity to carry out investigations across the wide spectrum of offending it deals with, and its ability to respond to new challenges as they emerge, consists entirely of the knowledge, skills and understanding that individual investigators have of investigative practice. Legal, procedural, scientific and technical provisions are, of course, important, but without the individuals who are competent to apply them in individual cases, they would have little effect. Therefore, the training and the continued professional development of investigators is of the highest importance to the police service. The model by which they are achieved is fast evolving away from internal police training schools towards further and higher education establishments, and increasingly involves external bodies in the development and accreditation of standards. These developments are entirely in keeping with the professionalisation of the role of police investigators. But past failures to recognise investigative practice as a distinct area of police work means that there has been little investment in practitioner-focused research and there is no tradition within the police service of practitioners taking responsibility for the development of a literature on investigative practice. As a result, there is something of a gap between the ambition to have investigators trained and developed according to a professional model and a literature that enables this to be achieved.

This is not to say that there is no material available at all. As will be seen in Chapter 2, many police forces, government departments and the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) have produced policy and procedural guidance on various aspects of criminal investigation, and police training schools still provide students with much useful material. But the coverage of this material is far from comprehensive and the quality is variable. Furthermore, little of it is available outside of the police service and so those delivering the many external courses and other development opportunities for investigators often have no direct access to it. Taken overall, such material cannot be considered to be the type of peer- reviewed professional literature that is available to other professional groups.

To some extent this gap in the professional literature has been filled by social scientists, academic lawyers, psychologists and others within the various academic fields that have an interest in policing. But because this literature reflects the research interests and methodologies of a wide range of disciplines, its relevance to investigative practice is variable. Much of the legal literature does have a direct bearing on practice, as does the sub-branch of psychology that is concerned with investigative interviewing. The forensic science literature is probably the most advanced in respect of practitioner involvement and relevance, but much of this is naturally aimed at forensic practitioners rather than police investigators. Some of the literature is based on research carried out to underpin policy or managerial objectives, and this applies to much of the social science literature sponsored by the Home Office and the ACPO. This has some relevance to investigators but when the aims and recommendations of such work are examined it can be seen that they generally relate to broader policy or managerial issues rather than the skills and knowledge that investigators need in order to carry out their role.

This is not to say that either academic or policy-based research is of no value to practitioners. Much of it is highly relevant and practitioners can gain a lot from it. However, the situation is analogous to engineers having access to a literature about the role that bridges play in society but not on how to build them, to nursing literature focusing on the policy and management challenges of the NHS rather than on patient care, or to builders having access to a literature on planning law but not on construction. Of course, the value to society of engineers, nurses and builders lies in the fact that they can build bridges, care for patients and construct buildings. As a consequence, and in common with many other occupational groups such as lawyers, accountants, teachers, social workers and many more, they have developed a professional literature in which they can be trained and developed and which can help them respond to evolving challenges. But a practitioner-focused literature such as this is only just emerging within criminal investigation.

The aim of this book is to contribute to that literature by providing practitioners and those undergoing training in the many disciplines that support criminal investigation with an introduction to the principles and practice of criminal investigation. It does this by exploring some of the key elements of investigative practice in the police service of England and Wales and how they are applied in the many situations where the police are called on to carry out criminal investigations. In particular it looks at the factors that shape investigative practice and how they influence the outcomes that are achieved.

Because the evidence base for investigative practice is still limited, much of this book is based on practice drawn from official policy and procedure rather than from an independent professional literature. As a consequence, I have not referenced the text extensively but have included all the material I have drawn from in the Further reading sections at the end of each chapter. As the focus of this book is very much on what individual practitioners need to know about the principles of investigative practice, many of the critical debates around policing within the social science, criminological, legal and psychological literature are not directly addressed. This is partly because others within the relevant disciplines are better equipped to explore them and partly because they are often not central to how individual crimes are investigated. They may nonetheless be of interest to practitioners and so at the end of each chapter I have tried to steer readers in the direction of further material on the wider questions of policing and criminal investigation.

Although the focus is limited to the police in one jurisdiction, much of what is covered is relevant to criminal investigations carried out by other public and private agencies and in other jurisdictions.

The remainder of this chapter examines the relationship between investigative practice, crime and the criminal justice system, together with the objectives that are sought through the investigation of crime. Chapter 2 looks in more depth at the development of investigative practice within the police service of England and Wales. The focus is on early developments, when the investigation of crime was merged with other policing functions and so acquired its role in delivering multiple objectives within a complex policing structure. Chapter 3 looks at how some behaviour comes to be defined as criminal and the legal and policy framework within which investigations are carried out. But the investigation of crime is not simply a matter of the police enforcing the law. Chapter 4 is concerned with information and how it is generated by a crime and the unique information profile that each crime gives rise to. Chapter 5 looks at the techniques that are available to investigators to locate, gather and use this information, and Chapter 6 explores the strategies that investigators use to deploy these techniques in individual cases. Chapter 7 looks at how the work of investigators is managed within the police service. Chapter 8 looks at how law and policy, information profiles, techniques of investigation and the strategies used by investigators to deploy them all come together to solve crime. Finally, Chapter 9 draws together the themes discussed throughout the book to examine how investigative practice is likely to develop in the future.

Investigative practice

It is difficult to overstate the importance that criminal investigation has assumed in contemporary society. During the first years of the new millennium, over five million crimes were reported to the police in England and Wales each year and crime control has become a significant social and political issue. As a consequence, society expects the police to be competent in criminal investigation at all levels, from the local to the transnational, and across all types of offending from the minor to the most serious. This competence lies in the investigative practice of individual police officers and police staff engaged in the investigation of crime.

The professional practice, sometimes also called the expert knowledge, of any occupational group consists of ‘the particular competences, specialised knowledge and practices used by occupations claiming autonomy and authority to solve specific types of problem’ (Flynn 1999: 34). Professional practice of this sort has been developed by other occupational groups which have traditionally been seen as having a broad and ill-defined public service remit similar to investigators, for example nursing (Bernhard and Walsh 1995; Benner 1984; Laurenson 1995) and social work (Davies 1994; Malin 2000). It is generally contained in a literature written specifically for practitioners and has to be mastered before one can be considered to be professionally competent. Such competency is usually recognised by a qualification or by entry on to a professional register, both of which function ‘as a trademark does, promising a certain level of performance to those who rely on it’ (Davis 2002: 4). It is often described in terms of the knowledge that practitioners need in order to provide the service, the skills and abilities they need apply that knowledge and the understanding they need to do so. Investigative practice can, therefore, be thought of as encompassing the knowledge, techniques and understanding that those tasked with carrying out criminal investigation need to do their job effectively.

The knowledge, skills and understanding required by investigators is shaped by the complexity of the investigative task. The law defines certain types of behaviour as criminal, it provides a framework of rules and regulations within which investigators must work and it determines the standard of evidence that is required before a prosecution can be brought against someone. The law, therefore, frames the type of problem that criminal investigation is for investigators and the way in which they can address it. But the law cannot describe the wide range of circumstances in which criminal behaviour occurs or the situations in which investigators will operate. Nor can it anticipate the type, volume or distribution of information generated by the unique circumstances in which each crime is committed. Some offences generate a large amount of information that is widely distributed, while others generate very little. Locating and gathering this information is the key focus of investigations, but the way in which offenders, victims, witnesses and communities react after a crime has been committed determines how easy or difficult this is. Not all crimes are reported to the police. Even where they are, the accounts given by victims, witnesses and suspects can be unreliable, partial or false and it is often difficult for investigators to know with any degree of certainty which of these applies in any situation. Investigative practice equips them with the techniques they need to locate and gather information, the knowledge they need to apply these techniques to the many different situations in which investigations are carried out and the understanding needed to interpret the information they gather and use it to further the investigation.

The main problem of criminal investigation is therefore one of matching the dry certainty of the law to the messy, unpredictable and complex reality of the human behaviour called crime. In order to do this effectively they require:

• Knowledge of law, information profiles, human behaviour, investigative techniques, and investigative strategies.

• Skills in applying the techniques of criminal investigation such as interviewing and searching.

• Understanding of how to apply their knowledge and skills to solve the specific type of problem with which they are faced. This includes understanding the social context in which the investigation is taking place and the way it will impact on victims, witnesses and the wider community.

Crime

Understanding investigative practice requires an understanding of the phenomenon it is aimed at addressing. Crime is first and foremost about how people behave towards each other and so it has always been a feature of the human experience. Ancient myths are shot through with tales of those who transgressed the legal boundaries of their society, and recorded history documents countless crimes against individuals, groups and states. Today, no news bulletin would be complete without crime-related reports. Crime is even invented for entertainment and a high proportion of books, films, plays and television dramas have fictitious crimes as their central theme. Whether our experience of crime is first-hand, from news reports or from fiction, most people are aware of crime on a daily basis. These e...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• 1 Crime and investigative practice
• 2 The development of investigative practice
• 3 Criminal law and policy
• 4 Information
• 5 The techniques of investigation
• 6 The investigation process and investigative decision-making
• 7 The supervision of criminal investigation
• 8 How crimes get solved
• 9 Conclusion
• References
• Index