CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATOR

Crime Scene Investigator



Crime Scene Investigator

Thesis Statement

The crime scene investigator is typically a police officer with several years of law enforcement experience and special training in crime scene investigation.

Introduction

A Crime Scene Investigator (CSI) is a professional who is trained to analyze crime scenes, assemble evidence, process that evidence, and return reports which can be used by law enforcement officials and members of governments. The requirements for this job alter widely, depending on the organization managing the hiring and national standards. In some districts, Crime Scene Investigators are furthermore sworn law enforcement officers, with the ability to arrest suspects and pursue various leads in the case, while others are civilians who have more limited abilities (Weston, 2000).

Discussion and Analysis

A crime scene is any location where a crime may have been committed. It can be a single location, multiple locations, the bottom of an ocean, several city blocks, inside the workings of a computer, or even somewhere in cyberspace. Suppose, for example, a person was kidnapped from a shopping mall (crime scene one), transported in a vehicle (crime scene two), sexually assaulted and murdered in an abandoned building (crime scene three), and taken to a field and dumped (crime scene four). Each scene would be considered separately, and each would offer the investigator the opportunity to gather evidence (Gilbert, 2001).

Most Crime Scene Investigators work either for a law enforcement agency or a company which needs trained investigators, for example an insurance agency which might send an investigator to the site of a car accident to determine whether or not the insurance agency will pay for the accident. Typically, an organization has a tiered system for CSIs, just like the system used for law enforcement. A Crime Scene Investigator should have different qualifications to reach various tiers; the more qualified, the more money a CSI can potentially make (Kennedy, 2003).

CSIs often start as assistants and are mentored by experienced colleagues. They attend crime scenes to learn police force procedures. The National Police Improvement Agency (NPIA) sprints training for new CSIs covering photography, health and safety, recovery and labeling of trials, fingerprinting and composing statements. The techniques are in modular blocks of four or five weeks and run beside workplace experience and assessment. The training leads to a base stage in crime scene investigation. Further NPIA techniques are accessible and construct on the CSI's skills.

CSIs take refresher courses every five years. There ...