What is The History of Criminal Investigation?

Question

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Answer 1

Criminal investigation began in England and briefly reviews the beginnings if policing by the Bow Street Runners of the Henry Fielding during the 1750’s to Sir Robert Peel’s first paid police officers known as the “bobbies.” There is the recognition of Scotland Yard serving as the headquarters of the London Metropolitan Police Department.

The first police departments in America were Boston in 1837, New York in 1844, and Philadelphia in 1854. By 1870 there is a police department in every major city in the U.S. due to the fact that each city had its own brand of violence, crime, and vice. Much of the crime and violence came from fighting between the Protestants and the Catholics, immigrants and Native Americans and the abolitionists and pro-slavery groups.

Scottish immigrant Allan Pinkerton founded the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in 1850. The agency was developed to help local law enforcement in solving cases that they were unable to investigate due to resources or incompetence. Pinkerton started a “rogues gallery” which was a compilation of descriptions of suspects, their hideaways, methods of operation, and criminal associates.

Even during the time of Pinkerton the New York City Police had some 20 detectives of their own. The NYPD had established their own “rogue gallery” of offenders and had over 700 photos of suspects. Chicago had its own Criminal Investigation Bureau in 1884 and Atlanta had its own Detective Bureau in 1885.

Federal Initiatives for criminal investigators began in 1865 with the creation of the United States Secret Service used to investigate counterfeiting. During the 1920’s the Bureau of the Internal Revenue was created to enforce Prohibition. The FBI originated from a force of agents of the Department of Justice under Attorney General Charles Bonaparte. Post Prohibition in 1933 former bootleggers turned to other crimes. In 1932 the FBI created a crime laboratory and made it accessible to state and local police. In 1967 the FBI made the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) operational. The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was created in 1973 from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.
At the local level of criminal investigations one of the most notable figures is Chief August Vollmer of the Berkeley, CA Police Department. Some of his innovative ideas included: officers on bicycles, motorcycles, and then patrol cars. He created the first centralized police records system in the U.S. There was the use of soil fibers and soil to solve crimes and he started the first school of laws of evidence. Then by 1914 officers communicated on radios. By 1916 he was teaching criminal justice at UC Berkeley and he was the first chief to require officers to have a college degree. He outlawed “third degree” tactics in confessions; used the lie detectors in investigations; and began using fingerprints to identify suspects.

Forensic science or criminalistics used science to criminal investigations. Hans Gross of Graz, Austria wrote the first major book of criminal investigations in 1863. It was translated to English in 1906 under the title Criminal Investigations. Frenchman Edmond Locard established the first forensic laboratory in Lyon in 1910. Locard’s exchange principle states when suspects enter a scene something of themselves, hair, fibers will be left upon leaving.

Technology flourished in the 19th Century and Alphonse Bertillion of the Paris Police Department created the Bertillion system, also known as anthropometry, studied skeletal aspects of the human body and noted it remained the same at full maturity. By the mid 1840’s, Dactylography, the study of fingerprints, became a popular means of identifying suspects in crime although it wasn’t until the late 19th Century it wasn’t learned that a person’s fingerprints were unique and unchangeable. This discovery was made by Englishmen William j. Hershel and Henry Fields.

The historic frequency in the U.S. of shootings made firearm identification extremely important. Forensic science started studying comparisons of bullets, ammunition, design and function of firearms, restoration of obliterated serial numbers on weapons, and distance of a fired gun from the victim.