Do you think all these CSI Shows are giving the criminal element a heads up on police forensic procedure? We’re tipping our hand with too much detail. I know, It is what it is.
I’m going to move this over to Cafe Society for you.
I’ve heard some apocryphal tales of juries refusing to convict because real life forensic evidence wasn’t the same as what they saw on CSI. I wouldn’t worry too much about criminals learning how to flout investigators by watching television shows. It isn’t as if CSI is an accurate representation of how crime scene investigation works.
Edit: Although I will say this. A few years ago the crime scene investigators came over to my place to take fingerprints off of my car which had been broken into. The investigators were two very attractive women. So maybe CSI isn’t totally inaccurate.
I should think that, if anything, CSI-type shows deter a certain amount of crime, by making would-be criminals believe that forensic techniques are far more powerful than they actually are. However, like Odesio, I have also heard that they have sometimes influenced juries to be more reluctant to convict. I guess that is a net plus, though: it is better that a crime does not happen in the first place than that the perpetrator gets his due punishment.
As an intelligent, self-aware, person familiar with the techniques shown on CSI I sometimes try planning the perfect crime, but I catch myself every step of the way.
Despite watching TV, few criminals are intelligent and self-aware. America’s Dumbest Criminals is more accurate.
CSI science is mostly wishful thinking, exaggeration, and dramatic license. If it were real it would deter crime because no criminal would ever try anything.
But that’s not the way criminals work. Forensic evidence is probably irrelevant in 99% of crimes. And in the rest criminals try to avoid what the police do in the real world, not on television.
Old timers where I grew up had an aphorism “Locks help to keep the honest honest” implying that the thief, and occasionally the honest, will bypass the lock. I would expect that knowledge of CSI techniques will sometimes deter the non-criminal but the any crooks who watch the program will do so hoping to educate themselves as to how to effect workarounds.
CSI-type shows have had a couple of notable effects, the first being the one mentioned above: juries have come to expect amazing scientific evidence, and if there is none for the case, they appear to be more likely to acquit. Unfortunately, jurors have come to expect that there’s a magic machine that you put the suspect’s hair in one end and a picture of him pops out the other, and they’re disappointed to find that isn’t true, and even if it were, our little town couldn’t afford it. They expect every crime scene to be fingerprinted, even when an eyewitness saw the neighbor kid he’s known for 15 years stealing car batteries. You don’t need to fingerprint that crime scene! But, the jury will penalize you for not spending an inappropriate amount of time and money pursuing worthless forensics.
The second effect is that the shows are teaching criminals how to be more effective. They show smart criminals using bleach or acetone or whatever to clean up blood or skin oil or whatever, and criminals pick up on that. They’ll wash off the blood at a gym or gas station rather than their own home, and they’ll incinerate their clothes. Actual crime scene investigators are finding their jobs harder because criminals are learning better ways to conceal their crimes.
I’m curious what evidence you have for this. How many crimes are committed in which the criminal actually takes these steps? And how do you know that criminals are learning from television instead of other criminals?
Trying to foil forensics is nothing new. People have been doing it since the dawn of fingerprints and ballistics. If people can figure out how to make meth in labs, why can’t they figure out how to use other chemicals? Why do they need tv for that?
I’m not saying that nobody ever looks to tv for answers. I’m asking what makes you think this is widespread.