Resources

Whether going out on a date, traveling through a foreign country, or interrogating a suspect in a crime, forensic psychology offers a wealth of tools to help decode people’s nonverbal behavior. These cues include gestures, vocal tones, body positioning, micro-expressions of the face, and a number of often subconscious indicators of people’s internal states.

A criminalist collects, documents, preserves, and examines the physical evidence at a crime scene, which could be something as huge as a bus, or as tiny as a pollen grain; criminologists, on the other hand, study why crimes occur, how they can be prevented, and the effects they have on a society.

True crime books have been pulling readers in for decades, and the reasons go deeper than simple fascination with the grotesque. Psychologists who study the genre point to the same appeal that draws people to mystery fiction: the drive to understand motive, to impose order on chaos, and to ask how a person gets here.

While the U.S. has only 4.2 percent of the world’s population, it accounts for nearly a quarter of its prisoners. There are nearly 1.3 million people in our nation’s prisons and jails. With 521 inmates for every 100,000 people, the U.S. is by far the leader in incarceration among Western countries.

Forensic genealogy is the most powerful tool that investigators have gained in the 21st century, but its quick adoption and lack of oversight have led to some serious debates around privacy and due process.

When BTK resumed his communication with the media in 2004, he overlooked a critical fact: this was now the 21st century, and law enforcement officers were becoming increasingly adept at forensic science.

The roots of predictive policing can be traced back to the 1920s when the Chicago School of Sociology researched parole recidivism. They then used this data to factors that would correlate to the prediction of future crimes.

Those who practice forensics are essentially scientific detectives. They must reconstruct an event after the fact, through the study of biology, chemistry, and technology. Forensic professionals study ballistics, toxicology, questionable documents, fingerprints, DNA, and trace evidence. Their findings help to convict the guilty and exonerate the innocent.