Assignment

Home Invasion—The Importance of Forensic Evidence

One of the most powerful parts of a case against a criminal can be the forensic evidence that is collected and presented. Dramatic breakthroughs in both the scientific and technological fields have greatly impacted the criminal justice system.

A recent crime wave has swept your city. Imagine you came home last night to find your house had been burglarized. Understandably, the police and crime lab are overworked and in need of help. Physical evidence (meaning any materials at the scene of the crime that could be valuable to a criminal case) was collected by crime scene technicians at the house and from a possible getaway car and is listed below. You will need to:

1. Choose the three most important types of evidence collected from the link below
2. Define the physical properties of the evidence collected
3. Explain what information can be found from this evidence
4. Hypothesize how the evidence could be used in the investigation.

Review the evidence that was collected from the crime scene.

Note that although this is largely a hypothetical investigation, the description of a material and how it is tested will be factual and you will need to conduct research using the Kaplan Library to identify reliable sources. The final results and importance of the evidence in an investigation will be up to your interpretation and largely hypothetical.

Review the link below for additional information.

• Source: National Institute of Justice. (n.d.) Forensic Science. Retrieved from http://www.nij.gov/topics/forensics/pages/welcome.aspx.

Assignment: Choose three pieces of evidence from the list presented above and complete the questions in the Assignment template.

Submitting Your Assignment

Save your copy of the Assignment in a location and with a name that you will remember. Be sure to use the “Save As” option to include your first and last name in the title of the document. For example, your Assignment might be called Shawn_Edwards_Assignment8.doc.

When you are ready, submit it to the Dropbox. For help using the Dropbox click the Additional Help button below.

ID: SC250-08-10-A