Criminal Investigation in the New Millennium

The goals of this course are to answer the following questions about the police criminal investigation process in the US: - How good are the police at solving crime? (Hint – not so good~~) - Who are the detectives and what do they do? - How did we get to where we are, and why? - What can we expect in the future? - How will forensics and technology help? - What will investigations look like in the year 2084? To help find the answers to the above questions, students will learn to use a handy framework to do the following: - IDENTIFY a crime problem (in terms of the phases of a crime) - DESCRIBE the availability of crime information and sources in each crime phase (in terms of space and time) - UNDERSTAND how the various detective models of the past have investigated crime (to see their strengths and weaknesses) - MANIPULATE what was learned to project how developments in forensics and technology, and a new detective model, can address future crime problems.