Outline of forensic science


The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to forensic science:
Forensic science - application of a broad spectrum of sciences to answer questions of interest to a legal system. This may be in matters relating to criminal law, civil law and regulatory laws. it may also relate to non-litigious matters. The term is often shortened to forensics.

Nature of forensic science

General forensics topics include:
  • Crime - breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority can ultimately prescribe a conviction.
  • Crime scene - location where an illegal act took place, and comprises the area from which most of the physical evidence is retrieved by trained law enforcement personnel, crime scene investigators or in rare circumstances, forensic scientists.
  • Mortuary investigations
  • laboratory examinations
  • CSI effect - phenomenon of popular television shows such as the CSI franchise raising the public's expectations of forensic science, stemming from the "dramatic license" taken by the shows' writers in which they exaggerate the abilities of forensic science, and this is of particular concern in the courtroom setting, where many prosecutors feel pressured to deliver more forensic evidence.

Forensic methodologies

History of forensic science

By period

  • Forensics in antiquity - ancient sources contain several accounts of techniques that foreshadow the concepts of forensic science that were made possible by the Scientific Revolution centuries later. Predating the scientific method, these techniques were not based on a scientific understanding of the world in the modern sense, but rather on common sense and practical experience.

By subject

  • History of autopsies - Autopsies that opened the body to determine the cause of death were attested at least in the early third millennium BC, although they were opposed in many ancient societies where it was believed that the outward disfigurement of dead persons prevented them from entering the afterlife.
  • History of dissection - Roman law forbade dissection and autopsy of the human body, so physicians such as Galen were unable to work on cadavers. Galen for example dissected the Barbary macaque and other primates, assuming their anatomy was basically the same as that of humans.

Evidence

  • Ballistic impact - high velocity impact by small mass simulation analogous to runway debris or small arms fire.
  • Calling card - particular object sometimes left behind by a criminal at a scene of a crime, often as a way of taunting police or obliquely claiming responsibility.
  • Fingerprint - an impression left by the friction ridges of a human finger. In a wider use of the term, fingerprints are the traces of an impression from the friction ridges of any part of a human or other primate hand.
  • Footprints - impressions or images left behind by a person walking. Shoes have many different prints based on the sole design and the wear that it has received – this can help to identify suspects.
  • Skid mark - mark a tire makes when a vehicle wheel stops rolling and slides or spins on the surface of the road. Skid marks are important for finding the maximum and minimum vehicle speed prior to the impact or incident.
  • Trace evidence - evidence that occurs when different objects contact one another. Such materials are often transferred by heat induced by contact friction.

Forensic tools

Organizations

Forensic practitioners

Forensic science in popular culture