Technological Advances in the Forensic Sciences

With the new technological advances, crime has not really decreased much, but in fact, it has changed in ways of how crime is being committed. Criminals are finding new ways to commit their crimes by using the newer technology advances available not only to investigators, but also to the public. Some of these advances include the development of the internet and new features that you might find on a home phone or even a cell phone. Even though these new advances may give criminals the chance to still commit crimes, they also give crime fighting newer ways to fight crimes.

In the past years, we have seen many breakthrough's in technology that aids investigators in solving crimes. Those many breakthroughs have come in the forensic sciences and the technologies used to find and collect evidence from crime scenes. Fingerprint analysis and collection has come a very long way since the days of its birth. Fingerprints can be lifted from crime scenes today within seconds when it was almost impossible to in the past.

Some other technological advances that have been facilitated in the field of forensic sciences are the use of chemical agents and laser technologies that help investigators while trying to identify blood and other bodily fluids even after they have been cleaned from surfaces. I think that this is a big advancement because it doesn't matter what the assailant does to try and cover his tracks by way of cleaning up blood or bodily fluids, the chemicals are going to recognize the characteristics of the specimen and identify it with help of the laser lights. The use of this technique will provide investigators with information about the victim, the assailant, and possibly the position in which the victim was when attacked according to blood spatter patterns.

Advancements in locating and collecting physical evidence has seemed some improvements but many more improvements have come in the analysis of evidence also. I wrote about fingerprinting earlier in my discussion, but I did not mention the ways in which fingerprints are analyzed and conclusions of suspects are drawn. With the discovery of using computers to compare and analyze data, the emergence of the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, or AFIS, has proven a high efficiency in identifying possible suspects using fingerprinting. Because this system is automated, making fingerprinting comparisons using AFIS has provided a faster way to identify