ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses three studies in which police and insurance claims investigators undertake real decision-making activities. It provides an exemplar of applying an naturalistic decision making approach to understanding expertise in criminal investigations, and highlights commonalities and differences in expert investigators' approaches to sensemaking. Despite differences in the scope and complexity of their respective investigative problems, police officers, negotiators, and insurance investigators face similar challenges in sensemaking. In criminal investigations, the initial assessment of a to-be-investigated situation can sometimes have a profound influence on the course of an enquiry, as the classification of a situation as a particular type of crime may lead officers to follow worthless lines of enquiry. Hostage and barricade incidents are "crimes-in-action," in which the police engage in fast-paced dialogue with a hostage taker to resolve a high-stakes situation. Investigators working in criminal contexts build complex explanations to flesh out possible crime scenarios, motives and modus operandi.
