Criminal Investigation: A Method for Reconstructing the Past

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.

James W. Osterburg was long involved in the investigation process, actively engaged in the functions of teaching, research, and public service. For 20 years, Osterburg served as a sworn member of the New York City Police Department (NYPD), where he assisted in the investigation of thousands of serious crimes. He testified in municipal, state, and federal courts on numerous occasions, and taught at the NYPD Police Academy. His academic affiliations include professorships at the University of Illinois at Chicago (Professor Emeritus); Indiana University; the University of California, Berkeley; the Baruch School of Public Administration at the City University of New York; and Sam Houston State University (as Beto Professor of Criminal Justice). A frequent participant in educational symposia, he discussed criminal investigation, criminalistics, fingerprint characteristics, and scientific evidence, and authored books on criminalistics and scientific investigation. His articles were published in a variety of scholarly journals, including the Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science; the Journal of the Forensic Sciences; the Journal of the American Statistical Association; and the Journal of Police Science and Administration. A Fellow and past president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, Osterburg served on the ad hoc committee appointed by the Academy president to review the homicide of Robert F. Kennedy and to help resolve the controversy that arose subsequent to the conviction of Sirhan B. Sirhan regarding some of the firearms evidence. Most recently, Osterburg was awarded the 2010 Paul L. Kirk Award, the highest award conferred by the Criminalistics Section of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS), and was named a Distinguished Fellow Honoree at the 2012 AAFS conference.

Richard H. Ward is currently Associate Vice President for Research and Special Programs at the University of New Haven. He recently left the position of Dean of the Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Sciences there. A former New York City Detective, Dr. Ward is an internationally recognized expert on issues related to criminal investigation and global crime.