Crime Scene Investigation Essay Example

Crime Scene Investigation What goes on behind that yellow tape that is always at crime scenes? What are all those guys in the funny outfits doing crawling around on the ground like that? How do those men and women figure out who is to blame for the murder? When a crime has been committed, law enforcement team members use many scientific methods, along with their natural intuition and skill, to discover who is responsible. In modern crime scenes, finger and shoeprints, hair, blood, bullets, bones, and even DNA are used to help solve the puzzle and catch the criminal. Down though the years, there has always been a constant battle between "good and evil." Criminals find newer, cleaner, and smarter ways to kill, while the criminal investigators, forensic scientists, find newer, cleaner, and smarter ways to catch the criminal. Much of the growth in forensic science is due to the scientific discoveries of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, including microscopes, photography, and poison detection. In 1590, Zacharias Jansen invented the compound microscope, which produced a significantly larger image than the traditional magnifying glass. By the 1880's optical microscopes and the comparison microscope had come into use. With the new and more powerful microscopes, a scientist can examine hairs and fibers, blood samples, or scraps of cloth in order to decide if they match gathered evidence (Owen 9). In 1724, a German inventor, Johann Heinrich Schultze, discovered the principle behind photographic film. About a century later Joseph Nicephore Niepce, a Frenchman, was able to produce the first "fixed" image. Later, William Fox Talbot invented the negative, which could be used to make multiple prints. By the 1870's, police were using photographs regularly to record shots of evidence at crime scenes, details of victims and their injuries, and shots of suspects after they were arrested (10). For many years criminals tried to get away with murder