ABSTRACT

The term ‘forensic science’ encompasses a range of activities, techniques and practices in support of the investigation of crime, many of which are not in any strict or formal sense scientific. Nor is there any consistency or agreement about what constitutes or demarcates forensic science; its constituents are unclear or at least contested. This lack of agreement or lack of clarity appears to be more problematic in the Anglophone world, particularly those jurisdictions which are influenced or are derived historically from English common law (e.g. Scotland, USA, Canada and Australia). The use of the term ‘forensic science’ in European jurisdictions is rare, with the nearest equivalent being ‘technical crime investigation’. The benefit of this latter term is its clarity of purpose and inclusiveness of methodologies – any ‘technical’ activity which is used in the investigation of crime. This formulation also avoids other contested aspects of forensic science, for example the implication that it is necessarily (or exclusively) science and the extent to which individual elements or practices are founded in scientific methodologies. Nevertheless, we will use ‘forensic science’ for the purposes of this chapter, as it remains the most frequently applied term in the relevant jurisdictions, and which we will take to include any activity that is involved in the recovery, analysis and interpretation of a wide range of technical 1 or scientific evidence which requires specialist knowledge not readily available within police organisations in Scotland. Examples of such evidence include DNA, drugs, fingerprints, shoemarks, glass fragments, fibres, toolmarks, questioned documents and more.