The use of science and scientific methods to detect criminals is not much more that one hundred years old. Police officers and detectives have always used deductive methods to try and isolate the culprit in a crime, but the use of scientific knowledge is relatively recent. It was discovered only late in the nineteenth century that fingerprints alone were a form of identification. The pattern of grooves on each individual's fingerprints are quite unique. This scientific principle, applied to criminology, was able to be used to identify individuals who had been at particular places. It was discovered that by using a fine dust, fingerprints could be made to show up on weapons, furniture, or other hard surfaces. Photographs could then be taken and compared with inked fingerprints.

In 1902 fingerprints were found on the looted cash box of a woman who had been murdered in London. Two local criminals, the Stratton brothers, were arrested under suspicion of the break and enter and murder. They were fingerprinted. The prints matched those found on the cash box. For the first time in history, such evidence was presented in court. The brothers were convicted of murder.

A couple of years earlier, a famous French case had established the importance of science in law enforcement. In 1899, the rotting corpse of an unknown man was found inside a trunk floating in a river in southern France. No one knew who the body belonged to, since he did not come from those parts. The case was a mystery. It attracted the attention however of a scientist, Professor Lacassagne, working in nearby Lyons. Examining the trunk, he was able to trace it to Paris. Studying the dead body, Lacassagne found that the victim had walked with a limp, had had an inflamed ankle and water on the knee. By studying the bones, Lacassagne worked out the man's height. By checking the teeth, he determined the man's age. The details assembled by the Professor were found to match those of a man called Gouffe who had vanished from his Paris home some months earlier. The murderers were found and Professor Lacassagne's evidence was given in court. They were convicted. By the early part of this century, the application of scientific methods to criminal investigation had become routine.

These days of course, forensic scientists and detectives have a wealth of modern methods of detection. These include ballistics (the study of firearms), spectrography (the analysis of the chemical composition of substances to determine what they are), dental forensic analysis (comparing the teeth of a victim with all know dental records of missing persons), entomology (the study of insects which lay their maggots on dead bodies), and many others. Science has become so sophisticated that DNA identification, a sort of genetic fingerprinting, has become a common weapon in the fight against crime.

Forensic Science is any science which is used in the course of a criminal investigation.  

The purpose of forensic science is to provide evidence to assist the police in the solving of a crime. It is then used in the courts to assist with the conviction (or proof of innocence) of a person charged with committing the crime.

TV dramas make it look like all forensic work is the responsibility of one or two people. And that they all solve murders. In reality, most forensic science work is to do with much more common crimes. Forensic scientists are specialists and work in teams. No single person can know enough of the theory and laboratory methods required to cover so many different areas: biology, chemistry, physics, geology, psychology and even social sciences. And every one of those has a whole lot of specialties within them. Biology, for example, has zoologists, plant experts, drug experts and those who know lots about the human body -- and that's just for starters.

The forensic process starts with the very first police officer at the science of the crime. He or she does their best to protect the crime science so nothing is disturbed. The forensic team can use the tiniest of items - a scrap of cloth, a drop of blood, a maggot from a fly - to help with the investigation. Then the Scene of Crime Officer (SOCO) takes over, ensuring every bit of evidence is collected from the scene of the crime.

In this unit we will be investigating how forensic scientists use DNA, fingerprints and bits of paper in the investigation of crimes.

In EUMY SMI-01 Forensic Science - of blood, bullets and bits of cloth, those aspects of forensic science are explored.

In EUMY SMI-03 Forensic Science - of poisons, bombs, fire and bugs, those aspects are explored.