Crime Scene Investigation - article by Good English Article Sites

Investigating Crime Scene Investigation

Most of the public gets its idea of what crime scene investigation is like from TV shows like CSI and various other crime dramas or medical shows. On these programs, crime scene investigation is portrayed as glamorous and infallible. The crime scene victim’s body will always hold key clues to their death, and when the state-of-the-art lab technicians dissect and examine the corpse, all is eventually revealed—the victim’s medical history, whereabouts and doings and so on. And in the end, the crime scene investigation team discovers the cause of death, confronts the murderer who breaks down and confesses, and then the crime is solved.

In reality, investigating crime isn’t as neat and tidy as TV makes it out to be. First of all, crime scene investigation inevitably involves dead, rotting bodies. When you watch those TV shows, you often see the crime scene investigators going right up to the corpse of the victim to start probing away for evidence. Shouldn’t they be wearing masks to protect themselves from the horrible stench and possible contamination? Also, what are the chances that each murder victim’s body provides exactly the right evidence needed to convict the murderer? By the time victims are murdered, it’s too late for them to arrange everything just right so that when the police arrive, justice will be served. The truth is that justice isn’t always served, and even if it is we don’t get to hear about it as much as we do about the crime itself. The media rarely focuses on the aftermath of grisly crimes, instead covering the gory details at length until the next big sensational crime story. Many crimes remain unsolved, but we forget about them and only remember when new evidence pops up and the media decides to bring it back to attention.

Crime scene investigation shows also tend to focus on weird and truly grotesque cases. You’ll hear about neighborhood shootings in the media, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find a crime show TV episode whose storyline revolves around a simple shoot-and-run. You’re more likely to see an episode involving serial killers, deranged love triangles, rare conditions and strange subcultures. Cases like these do exist in real life, but they’re not as common as TV would make them out to be. It’s just that bizarre cases receive a lot more coverage and exposure than “boring” crimes do, and they’re the ones that the public wants to hear about.

In short, television crime scene investigation is fascinating and often informative, but it’s not an accurate picture of what real crime scene investigation is really like. Modern procedures like collecting DNA evidence are impressive techniques that are useful for solving crime in the present, but they won’t always provide the answers that we seek. Ironically, imperfect crime scene investigation potentially allows for the perfect crime.

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