Technological progress allows police to integrate the latest innovations into their work routine to make crime scene reconstruction, geospatial analysis, and surveillance more efficient. One of such approaches is digital imaging, used for a long time but has recently reached rapid development. Criminalists create databases to collect text, digital, and physical information from multiple cases and then utilize it to help investigators build better strategies.
The forensic analysis applies the technology by detecting data from crime scene photos and combining all other case materials to gather evidence and improve investigation strategies (Carew & Errickson, 2019). Traditional crime scene reconstruction methods are costly and time-consuming, while digital imaging helps create 3D images to review a place, evidence, and events without leaving the lab (Raneri, 2018). Moreover, modern approaches allow the investigators to apply multiple versions and see if the gathered and combined data approves or refutes their theories.
Surveillance is another activity where digital imaging replaces old methods and makes it possible to broaden the evidence and get more information about suspects. Technologies like face recognition and CCTV cameras’ features can now be connected to big data sources to quickly discover important matches (Carew & Errickson, 2019). Traditional methods like watching cameras’ recordings for hours, surveying, and searching for overlaps severely affected investigations and allowed offenders to escape.
Geospatial analysis in forensics is crucial for recognizing criminal activity patterns, identifying suspects, and spotting places where evidence can be gathered. Latest integrations include digital collections and databases that work together with modeling software to provide investigators with multi-perspective views, rotative illustrations, and statistics that belong to a particular place or similar crimes (Carew & Errickson, 2019). The geospatial analysis conclusions are necessary for crime scene facts and witnesses’ testimonies approval, and the digitalized version of the process produces more reliable data than the manually gathered one.
References
Carew, R. M., & Errickson, D. (2019). Imaging in forensic science: Five years on. Journal of Forensic Radiology and Imaging, 16, 24-33. Web.
Raneri, D. (2018). Enhancing forensic investigation through the use of modern three-dimensional (3D) imaging technologies for crime scene reconstruction. Australian Journal of Forensic Sciences, 50(6), 697-707. Web.