Criminal Investigation, Fifth Edition: A Method for Reconstructing the Past
by By Osterburg, James W.
Category: Social Science , Criminology

Criminal Investigation: A Method for Reconstructing the Past is written to educate readers about how detective work should be conducted and how to clarify the investigative process. The text includes a comprehensive discussion of the fundamentals of criminal investigations and the method for reconstructing an event or crime. The ideas presented in this book are based on three major sources of information: people, physical evidence, and records.      The authors organize the parts of the text into three sections. The first section covers the foundation and principles of criminal investigation, including responsibilities and attributes of an investigator; interpretation of physical evidence; discovery of crime scenes; and the preservation, collection and transmission of evidence. Included in this division of the text is the illustration and discussion of the methods of seeking and obtaining information from people and records; followed by the discussion about surveillance, witness identification and interrogation procedures. The second part of the book covers the application of the principles discussed in the first section to criminal investigation. It includes the procedures of reconstructing the past events and the crime, and constitutional law, which forms the appropriate methods of criminal investigation and the categories of crimes. The last section of the book presents numerous special topics such as the emergence of crime, terrorism and urban disorder, computers and technological crime, and enterprise crime.      The book is written for students, beginners, non-experts and professionals in the criminal justice field. Dozens of photographs, graphics, table, charts and diagrams supplement the text. A glossary elaborates on terms found in the text, gathered into one handy reference.