Every contact leaves a trace

Abstract

When a crime is committed, the police and investigators are left with fragmented pieces of a puzzle. The forensic team helps to reconstruct the puzzle with the help of trace evidence, which refers to evidence left behind by the criminal at the crime scene. This can be anything from hair, fibres, shoeprints, pieces of clothing, blood, fingerprints, etc. The Malta Police was already adopting scientific methods during criminal investigations even back in 1931. In that year, two police officers from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) were given training in the taking and identification of fingerprints. Scene of Crime section was introduced in 1984 as part of the Forensic Science Laboratory, with a complete overhaul taking place in 1995, when 15 Scene of Crime officers undertook intensive training delivered by University of Durham experts. This Scene of Crime has since then become a core unit within the Malta Police Forensic Science Laboratory. A scene of crime expert works alongside police investigators to help solve crimes. Their role is to locate, collect, preserve and catalogue evidence from a crime scene, placing evidence into protective packaging and sending it for forensic analysis. The scene and each piece of evidence are carefully photographed, and then, properly collected and conditioned to avoid contamination, to be subsequently analysed in the laboratory. Once in the forensic laboratory, all the pieces of evidence are analysed and interpreted.