Forensic Criminology

Andy Williams

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9780415672689
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136233982
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Forensic Science
• Index: Social Sciences

This text provides an examination of the aetiological development of forensic criminology in the UK. It links the subjects of scientific criminology, criminal investigations, crime scene investigation, forensic science and the legal system and it provides an introduction to the important processes that take place between the crime scene and the courtroom. These processes help identify, define and label the 'criminal' and are crucial for understanding any form of crime within society. The book includes sections on:

• the epistemological and ontological philosophies of the natural sciences;

• the birth of scientific criminology and its search for the criminal 'body';

• the development of early forms of forensic science and crime scene investigation;

• investigating crime;

• information, material and evidence;

• crime analysis and crime mapping;

• scientific support and crime scene examination; and

• forensic science and detection methods and forensics in the courtroom.

The text combines coverage of historical research and contemporary criminal justice processes and provides an introduction to the most common forensic practices, procedures and uses that enable the identification and successful prosecution of criminals.

Forensic Criminology is essential for students of criminology, criminal justice, criminal investigations and crime science. It is also useful to those criminal justice practitioners wishing to gain a more in-depth understanding of the links between criminology, criminal investigations and forensics techniques.

Chapter 1

Introduction

A brave old world

The subject of criminology is regarded as both fascinating and enthralling. The excitement and apparent sexiness around the notion of crime and deviant behaviours is of course not new, neither could it be called monolithic. Burke (1994:149–177) highlights how, in early modern Europe, villains revealed the standards of the culture in which they belonged. Furthermore, public executions were not only part of the repertoire of public rituals but they were also endowed with a carnivalesque atmosphere (Burke, 1994:196–197; also see Foucault, 1977). Over the last 150 years, the excitement and interest in crime and the criminal have not only been linked but also matched to ideas and developments around forensics. Indeed, the mix of crime, criminals and forensics is so potent that it has spawned vast educational, economic, and technological industries that have increasingly influenced our social, cultural and political worlds. When people meet individuals who are criminologists or practitioners that deal with offenders, a common response is, ‘oh criminology is very interesting’. Of course, when asked for a cogent augmentation of this statement, further elucidation is often lacking or is distinctly opaque. Criminology does not simply deal with crime and horrific acts of behaviour against human beings; it also has to deal with a broad gamut of social problems – from poverty and injustice (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2010; Dorling, 2011; Jones, 2011) through substance misuse (Stevens, 2011) and violence (Flannery et al., 2007) to mental health issues (Maden, 2007). Despite such issues being intrinsic to much that is studied within criminology, people still vicariously enjoy a good murder mystery or hearing about a violent serial sexual killer. Indeed, serial sexual killers often draw the most attention from the general public and students, with countless undergraduate dissertations entitled ‘Mad or bad’ or ‘Theoretical explanations of serial killing’. It is actually quite surprising that the prevalence and reductive repetitiveness of these issues does not result in supervisors becoming killers themselves! Within the last 50 years, however, the apparent seductive nature of the criminal world has influenced a dramatic expansion in the three interlinked areas of criminal investigations, forensic science and criminology. It is not only cultural artefacts such as books, movies and TV shows that have proliferated in these years (can any reader remember when there were no crime, police, forensic or profiling dramas on TV?); educational programmes, professional bodies and organisations, and the resultant ‘exploitative culture’ (Cohen, 1972:139) have rapidly expanded during this period as well. The underlying thesis in Wiener’s Reconstructing the Criminal (1994) suggests it is not possible to think about crime and offenders and the subsequent societal responses without thinking about sociocultural influences. Furthermore, what is designated as a crime as well as components of physical evidence, the narrative of crimes and the resultant understanding of offenders and their behaviour are all determined by social and cultural discourses which intersect the areas of criminal investigations, forensic science, the legal system and criminology. This book is about these four areas.

The goal of this book

This book is intended as an introductory text for those wishing to develop a critical theoretical and applied understanding of forensic criminology, an interdisciplinary field within the social science subject of criminology. It attempts to introduce both students and practitioners to some of the core ideas, theories/concepts and issues that link four different academic subjects and professions – criminal investigations, forensic science, the legal system and criminology. It critically examines some of the core processes that take place in these four areas and assesses the usefulness that forensic criminology has for the various processes from crime scene to courtroom. In doing so, it discusses the underlying investigative and forensic epistemologies that will aid those who wish to undertake casework in the wide variety of occupations that currently exist within the criminal justice sector, and in related occupations outside of the sector. The core objectives are to provide social science students with a meaningful understanding of the interplay between forensic science and the legal system; and, through the lens of a criminological analysis, demonstrate the effects of forensic science on the criminal justice system and understandings of criminality. In recent years the market for forensically focused science and social science undergraduate courses has increased dramatically (see below for an expansion on this issue). Forensic elements have been relatively easy to develop and drop into the traditional natural science degree programmes; for example, in the last five years, lots of biology departments in UK universities have created ‘forensic biology’ or ‘forensic science’ degrees. What has been more difficult is creating forensic units for social science subjects such as criminology. The reasons behind these difficulties are numerous and include: jurisdictional boundary fighting over the ownership of forensics (Abbott, 1998 and 2001; Cohen, 1985); venomous criticism by specific academic disciplines, such as sociology and criminology, of any subject that could be construed as being even vaguely positivistic; and, finally, the lack of knowledge of forensic specialisms within criminology.¹ Despite these inherent difficulties, what has been quite remarkable in the last seven years is the huge growth in the provision of forensics in criminology and criminal justice degrees in the UK. This, of course, mirrors our closest Western educational systems: the US, Canada and Australia. This text has been written because of this increased interest, and it attempts to synthesise four crucial areas – forensics, criminal investigations, the legal system and criminology – into an introductory UK undergraduate text. My hope is that it will serve as a useful introduction that can be used by both students and practitioners in the UK who have an interest in criminal investigations, crime scene examinations, concepts of forensic science and their application to resolving legal problems. It will also be of use to international students and practitioners who wish to learn about our successes and failures. The closest rival to this text would be Petherick et al.’s (2010) Forensic Criminology; readers who are interested in this subject are advised to seek out this source.

Before discussing more about the contents of the book and introducing a working definitional parameter, it is important to mention what this book is not going to do. This book will not provide an in-depth overview of forensic science and criminal investigative techniques for those wishing to be forensic scientists or criminal investigators. It does, of course, critically discuss some of the core ideas, theories and concepts that forensic scientists and criminal investigators use, and the text includes a comprehensive bibliography for readers who wish to go into more detail vis-à-vis the science and the investigative techniques. However, as previously mentioned, the main audience are students and professionals who do not wish to be stuck in a lab, testing evidence – in the UK, these are the men and women in the white coats. Instead, this text is primarily aimed at those who wish to become, or already are, involved in the criminal justice process. For those readers studying criminology and criminal justice for the first time, it will soon become apparent just how broad the subject area is. To be sure, due to the breadth of the aforementioned four thematic areas, it will not be possible in this text to cover every aspect or caveat in the detail necessary to do each subject the academic justice it deserves. Laughlin’s (2008:28–29) concept of knowledge degradation is very pertinent at this juncture:

The nontechnical version of knowledge degradation is sadly familiar to most of us. It’s the basis of the famous party game in which you whisper a rumor into someone’s ear, let it travel from person to person, and see how it changes. After about thirty such transfers, the final version of the rumor usually has little resemblance to the original one. The knowledge degrades with each retelling because each person, in internalizing the information, isolates what he or she believes to be parts that don’t matter and then retells the story with these parts changed, thereby making it more interesting to the listener. [My emphasis.]

In short, knowledge loses its value every time someone retells the story. Whilst this text primarily deals with written, technical knowledge as opposed to the oral transfer of information,² the analogy still holds. Academic writers are necessarily selective and use information to fit their own objectives. In doing so, they selectively choose which parts of knowledge to discuss, emphasising particular elements over others. Furthermore, as Laughlin (2008:31) also notes, when it comes to technical knowledge, this loses its value in another way. Technical knowledge tends to be buried under mountains of irrelevant technical information. Being able to identify and apply the right knowledge becomes the equivalent of trying to find a needle in a haystack. This second aspect produces a catch-22 situation for many academics. On the one hand there is a lot of technical knowledge available on any given academic subject; and for many subjects an in-depth understanding of this knowledge should be required, especially at undergraduate level and in the practitioner world. On the other hand, the enormity of trying to understand all of the available technical knowledge on any given subject often results in enforced selectivity. The analyses and discussions undertaken in the following chapters are selective, and this point will undoubtedly be a bitter pill for some readers to swallow. In order to avoid the effects of knowledge degradation, this text includes case studies and examples, footnotes and an extensive bibliography that provide additional material to the critique interwoven into each chapter. As a final obvious point, for a fuller understanding of any aspect of what is written in the following chapters, go to and forensically dissect the original sources that are provided in the footnotes and bibliography.

Defining forensic criminology

Whilst the term forensic criminology is relatively new, the core elements of forensic criminology are not new and have a long history across many different countries. As far back as the mid nineteenth century, there were a small number of scientists, doctors and criminal investigators who utilised a mix of scientific methods and techniques to resolve investigative and legal problems (Rafter, 2004 and 2009; Davie, 2005; Evans, 2006). In 1906, Hans Gross, one of the founding fathers of forensic criminology, was the first to bring criminology, forensic science, criminal investigations and the law together under one analytical and educational framework (Gross, 1962). He used the term Kriminalistik, which, in the US, has often been thought to mean criminalistics.³ Primarily because of the work of Kirk (1974), this term became very popular in the US from the 1960s and is still widely used today. Other countries, especially the UK, have avoided the wholesale use of the term criminalistics and have instead opted for placing the term forensic in front of pre-existing academic subjects and practitioner roles. In educational terms, the result has been an explosion in the number of courses that have forensic somewhere in the title. The point I am trying to make is simple: new terms are actually not that new. Instead, they become caught up in the academic game of differentiation, fractal differentiation and fractal cycles, with each dominant paradigm eventually becoming involved in generational conflict with ‘defeat of one side, division of the winners, and remapping of the losers’ concerns onto the equivalent descendant of the winners’ (Abbott, 2001:23). An obvious criminological example is cultural criminology, which has attempted to subsume the cultural relativism and ethnographies of the Chicago School (e.g. Sutherland, 1956; Wirth, 1956; Shaw, 1966; Polsky, 1971; Cressey, 2008) as well as UK subcultural theories (Hebdige, 1979). In short, this concept isn’t new at all but is just the rebranding of old ideas. The notion of fractal differentiation and fractal cycles can also be seen in contemporary criminological and sociological postgraduate theses. Abbott, using the eloquent words of T. S. Eliot, spells out the crux of the matter: ‘For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice’ (Eliot, 1943, cited in Abbott, 2001:27).

We are currently in a fractal cycle whereby both the market demand and the generational paradigm have shifted towards the umbrella term forensics. The effects of market demand on higher education have been a dominant force in shaping the forensics agenda, with many academic subjects using the term forensics in their degree programme or unit (module) titles. Unfortunately, since 2010, the coalition government has initiated policies that have put the provision of forensic science in the UK at risk (Lawless, 2011). Forensic criminology is no different and this should be met with a combination of critical scepticism but also enthusiasm. But what do we mean by the term forensic criminology?

A multidisciplinary approach

Definitional parameters can be crucial but also very problematic. They are crucial for attempting to conceptualise the subject area under examination and for setting the necessary boundaries that any scientific and academic endeavour must operate within.⁴ They also affect the way concepts, theories, research and ideas are operationalised in practice. Unfortun...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of case studies
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• PART 1 The historical and epistemological backdrop
• PART 2 Contemporary forensic investigations
• PART 3 Failsafe forensics
• Notes
• References
• Index