ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 established that the goal of forensic science is to identify “things” at or associated with a crime scene and interpret them to provide evidence that will aid in the deliberation of cases before a court or other competent tribunal. Crime scene investigation is therefore a pivotal part of the forensic process (see Chapter 3 for a description of what is meant by the “forensic process”), because it is the actions at the crime scene that produce those thingsphysical entities, however small or nebulous-that can tell the story of what happened. Chapter 1 also introduced the concept that the development of the story, the reconstruction, involves a cycle of actions in which possible explanations, or hypotheses, are formulated, rigorously tested, and refined or rejected as more and more information is obtained. This cycle of actions is exactly that of the scientific process and therefore establishes crime scene investigation as a fundamentally scientific activity.
