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When colleagues working as CSIs, medico-legal death investigators, laboratory criminalists, criminal attorneys, forensic anthropologists, forensic psychologists, and criminal profi lers share a common link to the new technologies available across disciplines, solving tough cases posed by smart criminals can depend on this interdisciplinary knowledge. In embracing new technologies, 21st-century forensic investigative scientists are more likely to see commonalities and patterns in perpetrators and achieve the common goal of extracting violent criminals from society like a bad tooth. TEN PRODUCTS OF MODERN CRIMINAL MINDS CAPTURE Analysis of forensic evidence and criminal mind analyses drives 100 percent of criminal investigation and criminal prosecution. The four parts of this text, including 12 chapters, address the 10 products of modern criminal minds capture, plus a new paradigm of spectrum psychopathy. Solving riddles at crime scenes is a focused adventure in problem solving. As novelist Thomas Harris (1988) stated, sapient brains appear to have a knack for it. We are inherently curious; we want to know who and why ? The oldest tool surviving into modern times asking “who and why?” is criminal psychology —the first product. From 19th- and 20th-century police psychology, criminal justice protocols, a long history of autopsy reports, rigorous FBI research into known offender characteristics (KOC) from the 1970s, and mainstream literary culture—specifically from the fictional novels of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—criminal psychology has evolved as a viable tool of the investigative sciences. It has come so far that the stereotypical “clue-hungry” detective is now considered old school. In the 21st century, the field of criminal psychology has evolved in courtroom proceedings as forensic psychology.
Becoming a Forensic Investigative Scientist - Analyzing Criminal Minds
The bar for conviction in criminal cases is beyond a reasonable doubt or more than 90 percent certainty of guilt. This benchmark of evidentiary proof, along with insights into the perpetrator ’ s state of mind, produced the well known pronouncement from judges to “Prove your case.” Scientists did just that as the labs of forensic science were born. DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) analysis alone has become revolutionary in winning cases and, alternatively, freeing hundreds of wrongly convicted inmates as observed in the Innocents Projects created by attorneys Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld. DNA evidence connects the accused to crime scenes. The 10 new tools and improved products of forensic investigative sciences explain why the perpetrator “authored” the “handy work” of crime scenes. As mentioned earlier, criminal psychology found another pathway for expression in forensic psychology— the second new product.