Author : Colin James Armstrong
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 416 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (796 download)
Book Synopsis A Tactical Management Model of Forensic Evidence Processes by : Colin James Armstrong
Download or read book A Tactical Management Model of Forensic Evidence Processes written by Colin James Armstrong and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis argues for the development of a tactical management model of forensic evidence processes. Seeking desired justice outcomes beyond a single jurisdiction to address transnational crime is difficult. Not only are laws and legal systems different, evidence processing is not standardised. Management of forensic evidence demands global and local solutions. Without international consensus for the standardisation of evidence definitions, terminologies, and processes impartial interpretations of evidence will continue to be subjected to prejudices and biases. Scientific and technological progress is changing the political nature of justice. Stakeholders with different perspectives and different objectives exasperate problems with forensic evidence processing. Law enforcers, forensic scientists, and the judiciary understand evidence from different perspectives and maintain conflicting and at times disparaging views of each other. This situation results in injustices that sees the innocent convicted and the guilty unpunished. Law enforcement personnel are at the beginning of the forensic evidence lifecycle and flawed evidence processing at this point must progress to unjust consequences. Most practitioners in the forensic evidence lifecycle are perceived to be professional and academically qualified but law enforcers are often seen as blue collar workers. Using the design science approach, this research aims to alleviate that situation by contributing a new framework for building better forensic evidence solutions. This objective is to be achieved after investigating the scope and nature of the problem interviewing evidence practitioners with law enforcement, forensic science, and judiciary perspectives and reviewing pertinent literature. The design science approach facilitated iterative develop of a preliminary model during the consultative data collection phase. Combining high level theory building with practitioners feedback of the abstracted problem and solution building phase led to the development of a meta model. The resulting meta model and constituent parts address challenges to tactical management of forensic evidence processes to provide a holistic management tool. The meta model provides a framework for six component models addressing the perspective and reason for the intervention, the building of evidence knowledge, analysis of the relationships between evidence items, building forensic evidence networks of investigated cases, an evidence resource library, and finally evidence classification schemes. The meta model and incorporated component models provide the forensic evidence practitioner community with a global level holistic framework, and meaningful local level models addressing standardising the practicalities of forensic evidence processes. Evaluation of the meta model and components was conducted iteratively during interviews where potential solutions were explored whilst gathering data from evidence experts. The high level and global nature of the meta model proved testing and validation a challenge. Another limitation was the impracticality of fully evaluating some component models because they would require large implementation projects that should be guided by international cooperation and agreements. This thesis makes a foundational level contribution for developing evidence scholarship in inter jurisdictional systems to improve and standardise evidence processing practices and systems underpinning the emerging science of forensic evidence.
