The Purge: The Study Of Crime

Imagine you are in the movie The Purge: you look outside your window and hundreds of crimes are being committed. While looking outside the window, you see your brother dead on the driveway. Panic arises, but there is nothing to be done. The police will not come, there is no forensics team to collect evidence; no one will ever solve his crime. Thankfully, The Purge is just a scary movie; what if it was not? What if crimes were never solved? There would not be order in the world, and everything will be hectic. Thus, that is why the world needs criminology. Criminology, by definition, is the study of crimes and criminals. When crimes were first being solved, there was barely any investigation into them, especially when it comes to the forensics

Some of the most prominent criminologists are crime scene investigators, who collect evidence from crime scenes, being that the evidence they find can be key factors in solving a crime. Contrary to a handful of crime shows depict detectives as the main components in solving crimes, crime scene investigators are key players in solving crimes- they collect and analyze evidence, and none of it would be completed without the advances in science and technology over the last hundred years. From the time of its birth in the late 1800’s, criminology has grown into an extremely powerful and unique profession. Criminology was first invented in the late 1800’s by Cesare Lombroso, a.k.a. The Father of Criminology. Lombroso studied at three different universities, where he “tried to relate certain physical characteristics, such as jaw size, to criminal psychopathology” (Sabbatini). He believed that all sociopaths and criminals had certain physical characteristics that resulted

Throughout all different types of science, human error will always occur. Although it is worse if there is human error in analyzing evidence than measuring a distance (since investigating can help find a suspect), human error does occur. A scientist can misread information, mix up samples, or even contaminate a piece of evidence. Human error can cause trouble because it is “human contribution that creates weaknesses, that creates the potential for failure” (Dekker). Seeing that these pieces of evidence can determine if someone is guilty of a crime or not, forensic criminologists cannot mess up. A smaller downside to crime scene investigation is the amount of time it can take to process a piece of evidence. If a crime occurs in a small town that does not have their own lab, they need to send all of their evidence to the state lab, or the next closest lab to their town. This process can take weeks, or even months, because there will be a countless number of other pieces of evidence that were brought in to be analyzed. Analyzing a blood sample or a fingerprint is paramount to a case, in that they contain DNA or personal information that can reveal who the victim or the suspect is. The longer a case takes to solve, the less of a chance there is to catch the suspect, so there has to be an alternative to speed up the process of sending evidence to state