de Gruijter Madeleine, Nee Claire, de Poot Christianne J
Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Forensic Science Department, Weesperzijde 190, 1097 DZ Amsterdam, The Netherlands..
International Centre for Research in Forensic Psychology, University of Portsmouth, King Henry Building, King Henry 1st St, Portsmouth PO1 2DY, UK.
Sci Justice. 2017 Nov;57(6):421-430. doi: 10.1016/j.scijus.2017.05.009. Epub 2017 May 30.
Crime scenes can always be explained in multiple ways. Traces alone do not provide enough information to infer a whole series of events that has taken place; they only provide clues for these inferences. CSIs need additional information to be able to interpret observed traces. In the near future, a new source of information that could help to interpret a crime scene and testing hypotheses will become available with the advent of rapid identification techniques. A previous study with CSIs demonstrated that this information had an influence on the interpretation of the crime scene, yet it is still unknown what exact information was used for this interpretation and for the construction of their scenario. The present study builds on this study and gains more insight into (1) the exact investigative and forensic information that was used by CSIs to construct their scenario, (2) the inferences drawn from this information, and (3) the kind of evidence that was selected at the crime scene to (dis)prove this scenario. We asked 48 CSIs to investigate a potential murder crime scene on the computer and explicate what information they used to construct a scenario and to select traces for analysis. The results show that the introduction of rapid ID information at the start of an investigation contributes to the recognition of different clues at the crime scene, but also to different interpretations of identical information, depending on the kind of information available and the scenario one has in mind. Furthermore, not all relevant traces were recognized, showing that important information can be missed during the investigation. In this study, accurate crime scenarios where mainly build with forensic information, but we should be aware of the fact that crime scenes are always contaminated with unrelated traces and thus be cautious of the power of rapid ID at the crime scene.
犯罪现场总能以多种方式进行解释。仅凭痕迹本身并不能提供足够信息来推断已发生的一系列事件；它们只为这些推断提供线索。犯罪现场调查员需要额外信息才能解读观察到的痕迹。在不久的将来，随着快速鉴定技术的出现，一种有助于解读犯罪现场和检验假设的新信息来源将可供使用。之前一项针对犯罪现场调查员的研究表明，这种信息对犯罪现场的解读有影响，但仍不清楚用于这种解读及其情景构建的确切信息是什么。本研究基于该项研究，更深入地了解：（1）犯罪现场调查员用于构建其情景的确切调查和法医信息；（2）从该信息得出的推断；（3）在犯罪现场选择用于（反）证该情景的证据类型。我们让48名犯罪现场调查员在电脑上调查一个潜在的谋杀犯罪现场，并阐明他们用于构建情景和选择痕迹进行分析的信息。结果表明，在调查开始时引入快速身份识别信息有助于识别犯罪现场的不同线索，但也会因可用信息的类型和脑海中的情景而导致对相同信息产生不同解读。此外，并非所有相关痕迹都被识别出来，这表明在调查过程中可能会遗漏重要信息。在本研究中，准确的犯罪情景主要基于法医信息构建，但我们应意识到犯罪现场总是被无关痕迹所污染，因此要谨慎看待犯罪现场快速身份识别的作用。
