When a crime occurs, there is often a limited scope of time in which investigators have a high likelihood of solving the crime itself. Some crimes, like child abductions, have a very distinct frame of time in which the victim is likely to be found alive; however, even in homicides, the sooner the police or investigators begin to solve the crime by following clues, the easier it is for these individuals to discover the truth about what happened to the victim (Fish, Miller, Bramwell, & Wallace, 2013). The clues that the perpetrator or perpetrators leave at a crime scene are some of the most important tools that an investigator has to solve a crime (Fish et al., 2013).
All information that is present at a crime scene is likely pertinent to the investigation, and often, this information can degrade over time. The more people that are present at the crime scene, the higher the likelihood that mistakes will be made. In the hypothetical case of the homicide at the small duplex, the small size of the space itself poses a problem for investigators, as a cramped space can interfere with the number of people who can be present for the crime scene investigation itself. If an investigator chooses to ignore the breadth of the clues that are present at the scene and instead chooses to follow only a few of the pieces of information gathered, the true perpetrator of the crime might never be found. A good criminal investigator needs to be able to follow the clues and the investigation wherever those clues take them. This is the only way that the true course of events that led to the commission of the crime can be found (Fish et al., 2013).
References
Fish, J. T., Miller, L. S., Braswell, M. C., & Wallace, E. W. (2013). Crime scene investigation. Routledge.
