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Crime Scene Management

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Discuss the importance of good crime scene management and the maintenance of sample integrity.

This paper will firstly define the five building blocks, procedures and protocols that underpin good crime scene management. Secondly, the paper will argue the two most important factors that enable good crime scene management and sample integrity with reference to the highly publicised cases of OJ Simpson and Amanda Knox. Thirdly the paper will conclude to explain how good crime scene management and sample integrity is essential to enable successful convictions.

A ‘crime scene’, refers to the primary or secondary area in which a suspected crime has taken place where physical evidence can be obtained. Such areas include indoor or outdoor locations, vehicles or persons as noted by Jackson and Jackson (2011). Upon identifying a crime scene one is presented with a myriad of information and questions. In order to obtain the answers and evidence the crime scene presents that may lead to a successful future conviction(s), there are a number of important principals, procedures and methods that must be stringently followed and managed by the police’s criminal investigative team. As Jackson and Jackson (2011, p.15) has noted, “The way in which scenes of crime are managed and recorded, and how the physical and digital evidence is located, collected, packaged, labelled and stored, are all fundamental to the success of subsequent forensic examinations.”

The main objective of the crime scene investigation team is to recognise, preserve, interpret and reconstruct all the significant physical evidence a crime scene presents (Beaufort-Moore, 2009). The evidence is then examined by a forensic laboratory to provide the investigators with information to solve a particular crime (Lyle, 2004). Edmund Locard’s Principal of Exchange is significant to this process as he understood that

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