that_girl1 said:
I have a question. So a forensic scientist only works in the lab and/or in the field (i.e. crime scenes and such)?
When I started out in forensic science (way back in 1968), criminalists (forensic scientists) typically responded to major scenes such as homicides and kidnappings, and uniformed/sworn CSI officers responded to routine crime scenes such as burglaries. Sadly, and for many reasons, rape and assault scenes were often considered 'routine.' The homicide call-outs usually occurred at night, which meant getting out of bed and working 6-12 hours after having spent the day analyzing evidence in the lab. Criminalists (especially the older/experienced ones) quickly tired of getting called out, so when a young criminalist like myself showed up who liked to work the crime scenes, deals were quickly made. I tended to get most --- if not all --- of the call-outs where I worked ... but I still had to work my shifts at the lab after I got caught up on sleep. Such call-outs usually occurred about 2-6 times a month. I made a lot of over-time money, but didn't necessarily see much of my wife and daughter on certain days/weeks.
As the technologies and protocols in the lab became more complex (ie: DNA analysis), crime lab directors quickly came to the conclusion that it was a waste of limited resources to send their highly-trained and more-or-less expensively paid (overtime pay is expensive) scientists out to crime scenes to collect evidence when 'lesser-trained' staff working established shifts could respond to all of the major and routine scenes, collect all of the evidence, and bring it back to the lab for examination and interpretation.
As you might expect, the decisions to keep the forensic scientists in the lab, and out of the field, caused a lot of discussions/arguments within crime labs. Could you train a team of non-scientists (crime scene technicians) to recognize and collect evidence? Yes, of course. Would they be able to 'interpret' a scene as well as a trained criminalist ... or would they just collect evidence 'by rote' and not really think about what they were seeing? Well, that depended on the individuals, and their degree of training, and how much time they could spend at a scene before they got called to the next one ... etc etc.
So, to finally answer your question, most crime labs that I am aware of today tend to keep their criminalists in the lab and use teams of civilian (unarmed) technicians to go out to the scenes and collect the evidence. Unlike what you see on the CBS-CSI shows, these technicians would not analyze or interpret the evidence they collected. Ideally, they have time to transfer the evidence (at least on major cases) to the lab in person, and tell a forensic scientist what they saw at the scene, and what they think needs to be done with the evidence. But often they simply place their collected, packaged and tagged evidence into drop lockers along with an analysis request, and go back to work without ever entering the crime lab. Is this a more efficient system? Yes. Is it the most desirable system? I don't think so. I'd still like to see a criminalist/forensic scientist (yes, someone like Grissom) responding to major crime scenes along with one or more CSI technicians ... the technicians doing most of the routine collection work while the scientist spends most of his/her time evaluating the scene. But the ever-increasing complexity of the forensic technologies and protocols, the huge backlogs of casework that most crime labs face, and the unpredictable demands of the courts require the forensic scientist to be where her/she can be most effect: which is in the lab.
This, as you might expect, is why modern forensic scientists tend to find the TV CSI shows amusing ... in a wildly fictional sort of way.
but I know nothing. :lol: