Introduction
Investigating crime usually involves an official attempt to reveal the actual information concerning the occurrence of a criminal activity. Basically, there are three ways through which an offender can be subjected to the force of the criminal law in case he/she commits a crime (Berg, 2007). First, the offender has to confess, which occurs in cases where the offender is greatly affected by his conscience and therefore confesses. This rarely occurs. Secondly, the criminal can be caught right during the act by law enforcement agents. The third and which is most common is to label the criminal a suspect and launch a criminal investigation procedure, the criminal may confess in the process or be convicted by the criminal justice system (Hess & Hess, 2009). During a criminal investigation, there are basically two major concerns; knowing the person or group of people of people who committed the crime and the reason why they committed the crime; motive. This implies that the first stage in investigating crime usually involves the identification of the perpetrators. The motive can be known or suspected, and is used to during the investigation process. Other leads may include evidence that have been collected during the investigation process (Brown, 2001).
Steps in crime investigation
The first approach towards crime investigation in this scenario will be to evaluate the validity of the claims of criminal activity; which in this case is a series of burglaries. The allegations have to be justified before the launching of any investigation process (Berg, 2007). The justification of the crime allegations will involve visiting the scenes where the reported burglary cases have occurred and gathering sufficient evidence which will be used later to convict the offenders. In the process of determining the crimes committed, the crime scenes will be secured in order to avoid any manipulation of the possible evidence that can be collected during the investigation process (Hess & Hess, 2009).
The next step is the acquiring of information concerning the crimes. Different approaches can be used in obtaining information concerning the crimes. Some of strategies that will be deployed include interviews with the residents in the neighbourhood, interrogations with the suspected individuals, informants, the use of undercover operations, noting down any missing persons and an in depth tracing of the available sources of information (Hess & Hess, 2009). The acquisition of relevant information plays a significant role in the determining of the motive and key suspects of the criminal activities. The major challenge is that none of the residents is willing to admit that the burglary is really happening. This already implies that the information that they will provide will not be accurate to some extent, and therefore poses the need to deploy undercover operations in order to obtain accurate information
The next step will be identification of the suspects. A thorough analysis of the information that will be gathered is required in order to determine the suspects (Brown, 2001). In case there are any reported witnesses, then the information they provide is critical in determining the suspects. A critical analysis of the information is required in order to identify the correct suspects of the crime (Hess & Hess, 2009). This therefore implies that the investigator must not only rely on the information provided by the informants and witnesses but also attempt to relate the available information with the crime scenes.
The next procedure is the collection of evidence. The evidence that is collected at the crime scenes must at least cover all the aspects that relate to the reported crimes (Berg, 2007). One of preliminary stages in evidence collection is taking pictures of the crime scenes, which will be used to analyse the nature of the crime. The victims of the burglary are also to be secured as they serve as the key witnesses of the crime. The collected evidence is then analysed in order to evaluate its correlation with the criminal case. The evidence will be treated with ultimate care since they are most important elements of the investigation process in ensuring that the offender is tried and convicted by a criminal justice system.
Depending on the nature of the crime scenes, the extent of the burglary, kind of goods that the criminal targeted and any human casualties that could have been as a result of the burglary, a motive will is then evaluated. The motive could range from a number of factors such as targeting human life, goods theft, and burglary for fun.
The next step in the investigation process will be interrogating the suspects. The suspects are interrogated with respect to the already determined motive behind the crime. This is one of the final stages of investigation. The evaluation of the suspect will depend on how he responds and his nature during the interrogation exercise. The possible outcome could be their confession, failure to which they are subject to the criminal justice system for trials and convictions.
References
Berg, B. (2007). Criminal Investigation. New Yorl: McGraw-Hill.
Brown, M. F. (2001). Criminal Investigation:Law and Practise. Boston: Butterworth Heinemann.
Hess, K., & Hess, C. (2009). Criminal Investigation. New York: Cengage Learning.