Practicing Forensic Criminology

Kevin Fox Gotham, Daniel Bruce Kennedy

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780128155967
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Criminal Law
• Index: Law

Practicing Forensic Criminology draws on examples from actual court cases and expert witness reports and testimony to demonstrate the merits and uses of substantive criminological knowledge in the applied setting of civil law and the courts. Throughout the book, the authors provide a highly readable, informative discussion of how forensic criminologists can apply their research and teaching skills to assist judges and juries in rendering legal decisions. Engaging and lively, the chapters include excerpts from forensic criminological investigations, in-depth discussions of the methodological and analytical bases of these investigations, and important lessons learned from real litigation cases. Case examples are drawn from the forensic realms of premises liability, administrative negligence, workplace violence, wrongful conviction litigation, and litigation involving police departments and corrections facilities. Well referenced and thoroughly researched, Practicing Forensic Criminology serves as an introduction to the vast and heterogeneous field of forensic social science that is rapidly changing and expanding.

This unique and original book guides readers through the research work of expert witnesses working as consultants, researchers, and crime analysts and investigators. Offering expert criminological insights into litigation cases, the chapters reveal how forensic social science research can be an effective mechanism for reaching beyond the academy to influence public policy reform and legal proceedings. Practicing Forensic Criminology will appeal to a diverse audience, including social scientists, criminal justice students and researchers, expert witnesses, attorneys, judges, and students of judicial proceedings seeking to understand the value and impact of criminology in the civil court system.

• Introduces readers to the impact of evidence-based criminological theory and forensic social science investigations in the legal system
• Demonstrates the usefulness of forensic criminology as a research tool, revealing novel relational dynamics among crime events and the larger socio-spatial context
• Advances the development of a "translational criminology" – i.e., the translation of knowledge from criminological theory and research to forensic practice – as an expedient to forming robust interactive relationships among criminological social scientists and policy makers

Chapter 1

Introduction to the Practice of Forensic Criminology

Abstract

In this first chapter, we introduce the reader to the purpose of the book and discuss our goals and objectives. We then describe the different roles of the practicing forensic criminologist in the U.S. Court System and discuss the nature and process of civil litigation. Next, we contrast forensic criminology with criminalistics. We then discuss the important criminological and social science theoretical perspectives in forensic criminology, lay out the plan of the book, and provide short summaries of each of the chapters.

Keywords

Forensic criminology; Forensic studies; Criminalistics; Forensic science; Translational criminology; Criminal forensic criminology; Civil forensic criminology; Duty; Breach of duty; Causation; Cause-in-fact; Proximate causation; Pleadings; Discovery; Trial; Appeal; Summary judgment; Routine activities theory; Crime triangle; Crime generators; Crime attractors; Crime detractors; Crime facilitators/enablers; Crime precipitators

Introduction

The word forensic comes from the Latin term, forensis, which means “forum,” the place where citizens and leaders conducted trials and held political debates in ancient Roman times. In modern times, researchers and practitioners have applied the term forensic to a corpus of knowledge useful to the courts in the resolution of conflicts within a legal context. In some academic centers, forensic studies have come to mean the art or study of argumentative discourse, while other disciplines emphasize the legal and judicial aspects of forensics. Forensic science is the application of the scientific method to criminal and civil laws as governed by the legal standards of admissible evidence and criminal procedure (Iacono et al., 2002; Osterburg and Ward, 2010). Forensic science encompasses varied forms of scientific knowledge and evidence used by the courts to solve crimes and adjudicate legal disputes. Some researchers conflate forensic science with criminalistics—the analysis and testing of physical evidence in a crime lab for the purpose of crime detection (DeForest et al., 1983; Gilbert, 1986; Saferstein, 2001). Others draw a firm distinction between the two and argue that criminalistics is a loose collection of nonscience forensic techniques (Saks and Faigman, 2008). Over the last several decades, forensic science has become a major agent of interdisciplinarity, a field that is constantly expanding to include many additional areas of specialization and expertise used by the courts to solve crimes and adjudicate legal disputes (James and Nordby, 2003, p. xvi). Today, forensic science crosses numerous disciplinary fields and now includes the burgeoning subfields of forensic engineering, forensic cybertechnology, forensic economics, forensic photography, forensic radiology, forensic accounting, forensic anthropology, forensic psychology, and forensic sociology, among others.

Interest in the interactions of crime, criminology, and forensic science has experienced a virtual explosion in recent years. Books by Petherick and colleagues (2010) and Williams (2014) provide broad overviews of topics related to the subject matter of theoretical and applied criminology, forensic casework and investigation, and the law. Savard and Kennedy (2017) note that criminological theories, methods, and analytical techniques are not discipline specific but cross many different social science fields including sociology, psychology, and anthropology. Turvey and Petherick (2010, p. 3) define forensic criminology as “the scientific study of crime and criminals for the purpose of addressing investigative and legal questions.” This generalist definition encompasses applied aspects of criminal investigation, forensic mental health, and forensic science (crime reconstruction and criminalistics). A major assumption is that forensic criminology is a science concerned with the analysis of crime and criminality with the intent and purpose to assist with “investigations, administrative inquiries, legal proceedings or providing expert findings or testimony” (p. xxi). Williams (2014, p. 9) defines forensic criminology as “the applied use of scientific and criminological research and analytical techniques for the purposes of addressing proactive and reactive investigative work, and for aiding legal cases and issues.” Williams’ definition has the same elements as outlined by Turvey and Petherick and includes four core areas: scientific research and techniques, criminological research, proactive and reactive investigative work, and legal issues. Williams prefers a broad definition since “[c]riminology does not simply deal with crime and horrific acts of behaviour against human beings; it also has to deal with a broad gamut of social problems”—from poverty and inequality, discrimination, substance misuse, violence, and mental illness.

In our book, we draw on examples from actual court cases and expert witness reports and testimony to demonstrate the different roles forensic criminologists can play in the courts. We detail the uses of criminological theories, methodologies, data analytic techniques, and literature reviews in the applied setting of civil law and the courts. We show how expert witnesses can apply their research and testifying skills to assist judges and juries in rendering legal decisions. The term “expert witness” has a specific meaning in legal proceedings. An expert witness is a person accepted by the judge or hearing officer as being qualified to make judgments and offer conclusions in the area of her or his expertise. The expert witness plays an important role in the U.S. system of jurisprudence. Courts may rely on expert witness investigations and testimony in civil and criminal cases to explain scientific matters and provide their opinions to jurors and judges to interpret the facts of a case. Standards of admissibility for expert testimony vary depending on state and federal rules of procedure and evidence. Expert witnesses must have knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education to assist the judge and jury in understanding the evidence and facts of a case. We draw from real life expert witness investigations to describe the rich and varied experience of forensic criminology in the courts and illustrate how criminology can reach beyond the academy to influence legal proceedings. In doing so, we seek to strengthen the scientific foundation of applied criminological research and improve the quality of forensic social scientific research in the legal system.

If we view criminology as the scientific study of the etiology, patterns, and control of crime, then when this type of information becomes useful to the courts, we are then describing forensic criminology. For us, the scope of forensic criminology includes the application of criminological knowledge before the courts which includes the scientific study of lawmaking, criminal violations of the law, and societal reactions to the breaking of law. At the same time, we draw a firm distinction between forensic criminology and criminalistics which is a loose collection of nonscience forensic techniques and practices such as fingerprint analysis, handwriting analysis, document examination, pattern recognition, eyewitness analysis, arson analysis, and trace evidence. In addition, the main object of analysis for the forensic criminologist is neither the offender nor the victim per se but the criminal event. Scholars tend to divide theories of crime into those theories that seek to explain the development of criminal offenders and those that seek to explain the development of criminal events. Theories of and research on offenders have been dominant in the development of criminology (Clarke, 1980; for an overview, see Wilcox and Cullen, 2018). Most research on crime and crime prevention has been focused on why certain types of people commit crime and what we can do about them.

In contrast, the forensic criminologist uses criminological theory to organize data collection and analysis toward the specific goal of understanding the causes of the criminal event. Thus, any analysis and explanation of how and why a crime happens will need to account where and when it happens. The analytical focus on how and why criminal events occur at particular places is not unique or specific to forensic criminology. What is unique to forensic criminology is the application of scientific knowledge and evidence to address research questions about crime events for legal purposes. Also of concern is whether a criminal event could have been prevented and if so how. We will explore these issues throughout the book.

Goals and Objectives

Our book has three basic goals. Our first goal is to introduce readers to the significance and impact of forensic social science investigations in the legal system. Forensic criminology books by Williams and Petherick and colleagues are important because of the broad and interdisciplinary perspectives they bring to the study of the interactions of forensic science and crime. A major contribution of our book is to build on the foundational value of these books by drawing on specific examples of social science investigations in the forensic realms of premises liability, administrative negligence, workplace violence, wrongful conviction litigation, and litigation involving police and corrections facilities. Our chapters include excerpts from actual forensic investigations and expert witness reports, in-depth discussions of the methodological and analytical bases of these investigations, and important lessons learned from actual litigation cases. By engaging and analyzing expert witness reports, we aim to describe the nature and role of expert forensic testimony and the impact of criminological theory and methods in the U.S. legal system. The expert witness reports we analyze reveal how forensic criminologists can carry out basic and practice-oriented research, conduct evaluations, assist in policy analysis, and prepare and provide expert testimony before the courts.

Our second goal is to demonstrate the usefulness of forensic criminology as a research tool that can reveal novel relational dynamics among crime events and the larger socio-spatial context. In the preface to Forensic Criminology, Turvey and Petherick (2010, p. xx) advocate for a criminology that is a “forensic behavioral science,” a perspective that focuses on the actions, choices, psychology, and personality of criminals to answer investigative and legal questions. While our social science perspective has obvious intersections with this psychological-oriented position, our forensic work is informed by theoretical and empirical research in environmental criminology, routine activities theory, situational crime prevention approaches, crime prevention through environment design (CPTED), situational opportunity perspectives, crime pattern theory, and place management theory (Atlas, 2013; Brantingham and Brantingham, 1981; Cohen and Felson, 1979; Roncek and Maier, 1991; Sherman, 1995; Sherman et al., 1989; Clarke, 1983; Cozens and Love, 2015; Wilcox and Cullen, 2018). While diverse in their topics and investigative orientations, many of the expert witness reports we draw on examine criminal behavior as significantly influenced by the nature of the immediate environment in which it occurs. This environmental perspective assumes that individual action and behavior including crime events result from a person-s...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: Introduction to the Practice of Forensic Criminology
• Chapter 2: Criminology on Trial: Science, Law, and the Admissibility of Expert Testimony
• Chapter 3: Premises Liability for Negligent Security Litigation
• Chapter 4: Apartment Security I: Measuring and Analyzing Crime Foreseeability
• Chapter 5: Apartment Security II: Standards of Care and Causation
• Chapter 6: Crime and Business I: Negligent Security Litigation Concerning Parking Facilities and Hotels/Motels
• Chapter 7: Crime and Business II: Negligent Security Litigation Concerning Shopping Malls and Bars/Taverns
• Chapter 8: Administrative Negligence, Vicarious Liability, and the Doctrine of Respondeat Superior
• Chapter 9: Workplace Violence
• Chapter 10: Wrongful Conviction Litigation
• Chapter 11: Civil Litigation Involving Police and Corrections
• Chapter 12: Conclusions and Additional Practice Considerations
• References
• Index