A desperate phone call from an old acquaintance plunges forensic psychiatrist Claire Roget into an explosive situation with echoes in her own past. Forensic psychiatrist Dr Claire Roget finds it impossible to refuse when she receives a desperate phone call from an old acquaintance, obstetrician Charles Tissot. One of his patients, Heather Kimble, alleges that Tissot seduced her at a party and that he is the father of her unborn child. His career on the line, Charles begs Claire to expose Heather's fragile mental state and discredit her wild claims. With a history of making similar false allegations, her two previous babies having suffered unexplained cot deaths, Heather's accusations would appear to be nothing more than the result of a damaged mind. But as Claire delves further, it becomes clear that Charles hasn't been telling her the whole truth. Could Heather's story possibly have some merit? And is her unborn child in danger?

Forensic Firearm Examination provides the reader with a thorough understanding of theory, application, and process of firearm comparison. It is essential in the field of forensic firearm examination to not only understand the marks that examiners are observing, but more importantly learn where these marks come from during the manufacturing process. This book explores the various machining techniques utilized in the manufacturing process and the resulting marks left by those tools. This information will equip the examiner with the knowledge to answer questions posed by the legal system regarding the uniqueness or potential similarity of marks on firearms imparted to fired bullets and cartridge cases. Intended primarily for firearm and tool mark examiners, this valuable resource serves as a primary requirement for the training of firearm and tool mark examiners. Other forensic science disciplines who rely on pattern matching as a primary determining factor whether or not two objects may share a common source would also find utility in this work. Finally, it will be a valuable resource for attorneys who are seeking to understand better the scientific aspects of firearm identification. Written by a foremost expert in the field, Forensic Firearm Examination explores specific firearm manufacturing techniques and the resulting marks, which has not been covered in any book publication. Chris Monturo has over 23 years of experience as forensic firearm and tool mark examiner. Additionally, he is a distinguished member of the Association of Firearm and Tool Mark Examiners (AFTE), a past member of the Scientific Working Group for Firearm and Tool Marks (SWGGUN), past member of the Organization of Scientific Area Subcommittees (OSAC) for firearm and tool marks and has instructed courses in machining for the firearm examiner in the United States and Internationally.

Trends of Environmental Forensics in Pakistan covers a variety of topics, including discussions on alterations in soil chemistry that are related to the malicious effects of pesticides, variations in biosphere and hydrosphere due to deviating toxicological responses, evidence and datasets to highlight potential crimes, and the advent of biological warfare and its effects across the globe, and exclusively in Pakistan. Pakistan, a country comprised of vast climatic zones, ethnic groups, diverse faiths and profound biodiversity is also vulnerable to different devastating incidents, hence this book presents tactics and information that are critical to this region.

The Forensic Crime Scene: A Visual Guide, Second Edition presents knowledgeable chapters on crime scene investigation, the various types of documentation, scene reconstruction, and the value of evidence and proper evidence collection. Additionally, a companion site hosts video and additional instructional materials. The primary goal of this book is to provide visual instruction on the correct way to process a forensic crime scene. By using photographs and video clips to show proper vs. improper procedures, the reader will be able to identify the correct principles required to process a scene.

Wrongful convictions are the result of faulty or false scientific evidence in 50% of the cases. Defense counsel is often at a great disadvantage in defending against evidence based on science. Illusory Evidence: The Psychology and Sociology of Wrongful Convictions is written for the non-scientist, to make complicated scientific information clear and concise enough for attorneys and judges to master. This is obtained by providing case studies to simplify issues in forensic psychology for the legal professional.

Postmortem Toxicology addresses the various aspects of the practice of forensic postmortem toxicology from a viewpoint of elements which must be taken into consideration for proper interpretation of the toxicological result, not in a vacuum but in a more holistic and global sense. The volume examines pre-analytical factors, storage containers/conditions, prior medical interventions and therapy, along with information from the scene investigation and anatomical findings. This reference also provides explanation of the complicating conditions for the interpretation of the toxicological results due to postmortem decomposition, embalming artifacts and the postmortem redistribution of drugs. Tolerance is also discussed as an aid to interpreting results from a habitual/chronic user of medications and/or drugs of abuse. The book is geared towards the current practitioner; however, it is written to be used as a valuable reference for a graduate or post-graduate level courses in forensic toxicology or forensic pathology.

This textbook provides students and law enforcement officers with the fundamentals of the criminal investigation process, from arrival on the scene to trial procedures. Written in a clear and simple style, Criminal Investigation: Law and Practice surpasses traditional texts by presenting a unique combination of legal, technical, and procedural aspects of the criminal investigation. The hands-on approach taken by the author helps to increase the learning experience.
Criminal Investigation: Law and Practice, Second Edition, has been written to provide future law enforcement officers with a basic understanding of the investigative process. It merges two areas that are crucial to the successful completion of an investigation: the law, both criminal and procedural, and criminal investigative techniques. It is writen to provide the student investigator with the information needed to complete and investigation that can result in a successful prosecution.
- comprehensive coverage of the criminal investigation, from arrival on the scene to trial procedures
-unique combination of legal, technical, and procedural aspects of criminal investigation
-many updated cases, many personally experienced by the author.

Behavioral Analysis, the latest release in the Advanced Forensic Science series, an ongoing reference that grew out of recommendations from the 2009 NAS Report: Strengthening Forensic Science: A Path Forward serves as a graduate level text for those studying and teaching forensic psychology, and is also an excellent reference for forensic psychologists. Coverage includes investigations, death and violence, abuse, other methods and professional issues. Edited by a world-renowned, leading forensic expert, the Advanced Forensic Science series is a long overdue solution for those in the forensic science community.

This book describes the state of the art and future prospects of the most important bio-medicolegal subdisciplines in the post-genomic framework of personalized medicine. Focusing on the three main themes Innovation, Unitariness and Evidence, the book addresses a wide range of topics, including: Bio-Medicolegal and Criminological Sciences, Forensic Pathology and Anthropology, Clinical and Forensic Medicine in Living Persons (from Interpersonal Violence to Personal Injury and Damage, Malpractice, Personal Identification and Age Estimation), Forensic Genetics and Genomics, and Toxicology and Imaging. The unitariness of the "Bio-Medicolegal Sciences", historically founded on the accuracy and rigor of the methods of ascertainment and criteria of evaluation, should be re-established on the basis of molecular evidence, and used to promote Personalized Justice. Taken together, the book's conclusions and future perspectives outline a vision of transdisciplinary innovation and future evidence in the framework of personalized justice.

The terms forensic investigator and forensic investigation are part of our cultural identity. They can be found in the news, on television, and in film. They are invoked, generally, to imply that highly trained personnel will be collecting some form of physical evidence with eventual scientific results that cannot be questioned or bargained with. In other words, they are invoked to imply the reliability, certainty, and authority of a scientific inquiry. Using cases from the authors' extensive files, Forensic Investigations: An Introduction provides an overview of major subjects related to forensic inquiry and evidence examination. It will prepare Criminal Justice and Criminology students in forensic programs for more specialized courses and provide a valuable resource to newly employed forensic practitioners. Written by practicing and testifying forensic professionals from law enforcement, academia, mental health and the forensic sciences, this work offers a balanced scientific approach, based on the established literature, for broad appeal. The purpose of this book is to help students and professionals rid themselves of the myths and misconceptions they have accumulated regarding forensic investigators and the subsequent forensic investigations they help to conduct. It will help the reader understand the role of the forensic investigator; the nature and variety of forensic investigations that take place in the justice system; and the mechanisms by which such investigations become worthy as evidence in court. Its goals are no loftier than that. However, they could not be more necessary to our understanding of what justice is, how it is most reliably achieved, and how it can be corrupted by those who are burdened with apathy and alternative motives.

This book explores how forensic psychology has come to inhabit a central unifying discursive presence in the life world of modern carceral institutions. Providing a sociological and qualitative account of forensic practitioner psychologists, the author looks both in, and alongside, the work of such practitioners to explore how they simultaneously occupy positions of power and vulnerability. Focusing not only on how practitioners themselves come to embody a pervasive system of disciplinary expertise, but also on how they experience other forms of penal control, the book offers a novel and complete exploration of forensic psychology, the modern prison, and power. This is an accessible text for prison practitioners, criminological and sociological researchers and forensic psychologists on the nature and reality of forensic psychological practice in the contemporary prisons of England and Wales.

Photographic imagery has come a long way from the pinhole cameras of the nineteenth century. Digital imagery, and its applications, develops in tandem with contemporary society's sophisticated literacy of this subtle medium. This book examines the ways in which digital images have become ever more ubiquitous as legal and medical evidence, just as they have become our primary source of news and have replaced paper-based financial documentation. Crucially, the contributions also analyze the very profound problems which have arisen alongside the digital image, issues of veracity and progeny that demand systematic and detailed response: It looks real, but is it? What camera captured it? Has it been doctored or subtly altered? Attempting to provide answers to these slippery issues, the book covers how digital images are created, processed and stored before moving on to set out the latest techniques for forensically examining images, and finally addressing practical issues such as courtroom admissibility. In an environment where even novice users can alter digital media, this authoritative publication will do much so stabilize public trust in these real, yet vastly flexible, images of the world around us.

The Advanced Forensic Science Series grew out of the recommendations from the 2009 NAS Report: "Strengthening Forensic Science: A Path Forward." This volume, Firearm and Toolmark Examination and Identification, will serve as a graduate-level text for those studying and teaching firearm and toolmark examination and identification. It will also prove an excellent reference for forensic practitioner's libraries or use in their casework. Coverage includes a wide variety of tools and toolmarks, analysis of gunshots, ammunition, gunshot wounds and professional issues they may encounter.

The Analysis of Burned Human Remains, Second Edition, provides a primary source for osteologists and the medical/legal community for the understanding of burned bone remains in forensic or archaeological contexts. It describes in detail the changes in human bone and soft tissues as a body burns at both the chemical and gross levels and provides an overview of the current procedures in burned bone study. Case studies in forensic and archaeological settings aid those interested in the analysis of burned human bodies, from death scene investigators to biological anthropologists.

If Sherlock Holmes had cracked the O. J. Simpson case, he would have done it with forensic science. Techniques and devices used to analyze crime scene evidence--and their real and fictional practitioners--have long fascinated the public. This reference covers all aspects of forensic science:

Types of evidence

Types of crimes or conditions

Criminal cases

Criminal and civil law

The disciplines of criminal justice

Poisons and drugs

The evolution of forensics

Forensic scientists and officials

Serial killers

Relevant literature, characters, and writers

The study focuses on the criminal and societal effects of forensic science in the United States, with attention paid to major British and French advances. The book also examines historical cases in which new techniques were first applied. Entries are arranged both alphabetically and topically, making them easily accessible to student and amateur sleuth alike.

Children are suffering from a hidden epidemic of child abuse and neglect. Every year more than 3 million reports of child abuse are made in the United States involving more than 6 million children. The United States has one of the worst records among industrialized nations - losing on average between four and seven children every day to child abuse and neglect. The WHO reports that over 40 million children, below the age of 15, are subjected to child abuse each year. Domestic violence in the home increases that risk threefold. Child Abuse Investigation Field Guide is intended to be a resource for anyone working with cases involving abuse, neglect or sexual assault of children. It is designed to be a quick reference and focuses on the best practices to use during a child abuse investigation. The guide explains the Minimal Facts Interview, the Forensic Interview, and the entire process from report to court. It is understood that every state has different statutes regarding these topics; however the objectives of recognizing, reporting, and investigating cases of this nature are the same. Just as every crime scene is different, every case involving a child is different. Best practices and standard procedures exist to help ensure cases are discovered, reported and investigated properly, to ensure good documentation is obtained to achieve prosecution and conviction. This field guide will be a useful tool for law enforcement, child protective services, social service caseworkers, child advocates, and other personnel and agencies working for the welfare of children.

We are enamored with stories about cops, but rarely do we get a chance to walk in the shoes of one while reading about the personal and spiritual battles waged when one is fighting crime. Jim's narrative will pull you into the moment of each crisis. These stories are the material of movies but they happened in real life. Jim will weave his experiences into the truth taught in Scripture. Whether or not you are part of the law enforcement community, you will be entertained by the adventures. Regardless of your relationship with Christ, you will be challenged to do something with the claims made by Jesus. There is engaging action in this book, but the serious purpose is that it will serve as a challenging devotional guide and bring you closer to Christ.

As scholars have by now long contended, global neoliberalism and the violence associated with state restructuring provide key frameworks for understanding flows of people across national boundaries and, eventually, into the treacherous terrains of the United States borderlands. The proposed volume builds on this tradition of situating migration and migrant death within broad, systems-level frameworks of analysis, but contends that there is another, perhaps somewhat less tidy, but no less important sociopolitical story to be told here. Through examination of how forensic scientists define, navigate, and enact their work at the frontiers of US policy and economics, this book joins a robust body of literature dedicated to bridging social theory with bioarchaeological applications to modern day problems. This volume is based on deeply and critically reflective analyses, submitted by individual scholars, wherein they navigate and position themselves as social actors embedded within and, perhaps partially constituted by, relations of power, cultural ideologies, and the social structures characterizing this moment in history. Each contribution addresses a different variation on themes of power relations, production of knowledge, and reflexivity in practice. In sum, however, the chapters of this book trace relationships between institutions, entities, and individuals comprising the landscapes of migrant death and repatriation and considers their articulation with sociopolitical dynamics of the neoliberal state.

Forensic Document Examination enlightens forensic document examiners, forensic investigators, attorneys, and others using the services of forensic document examiners with basic principles, current trends in the area, and standards and methodologies which were non-existent 20 years ago. Instrumentation has moved beyond the microscope and the magnifying glass to digital cameras, digital microscopes, video spectral comparators, electrostatic detection devices for the development of indented writing on paper, scanners, and software programs like Write-On 2(r) and Photoshop(r). All of this equipment and these various techniques are covered here, and more.
Covers basic principles and methodologies used in forensic document examinationContains state-of-the-art techniques and new trendsIncludes research over the last ten years and describes the future direction of forensic document examination

"Google Earth Forensics" is the first book to explain how to use Google Earth in digital forensic investigations. This book teaches you how to leverage Google's free tool to craft compelling location-based evidence for use in investigations and in the courtroom. It shows how to extract location-based data that can be used to display evidence in compelling audiovisual manners that explain and inform the data in contextual, meaningful, and easy-to-understand ways.

As mobile computing devices become more and more prevalent and powerful, they are becoming more and more useful in the field of law enforcement investigations and forensics. Of all the widely used mobile applications, none have more potential for helping solve crimes than those with geo-location tools.

Written for investigators and forensic practitioners, "Google Earth Forensics" is written by an investigator and trainer with more than 13 years of experience in law enforcement who will show you how to use this valuable tool anywhere at the crime scene, in the lab, or in the courtroom.
Learn how to extract location-based evidence using the Google Earth program or app on computers and mobile devicesCovers the basics of GPS systems, the usage of Google Earth, and helps sort through data imported from external evidence sourcesIncludes tips on presenting evidence in compelling, easy-to-understand formats