Crime Scene Photography Research Articles

Worth a Thousand Words: Crime Scenes Represented by Photojournalists and Forensic Photographers in Brazil

ABSTRACT This article compares how crime scenes are represented by photojournalists and forensic photographers in the city of Brasília. It starts from the premise that crime scene photography adheres to the social and professional contexts of the professional group that is taking it who, in turn, determines its identities, practices and conventions. The methodology consists of an analysis of 168 photos taken of three cases of femicide that occurred between 2016 and 2019, and in-depth interviews conducted with three photojournalists and three forensic photographers. News photographs place their importance on the selection of information that is going to be shown to their audience, usually choosing people and elements that evoke emotions. Forensic photographers emphasize documentation and control, using high-angle shots to capture everything. Both fields claim objectivity in their production, but in opposite ways, as forensic photography attempts to prove what is shown, and news photography hides and distorts elements to appeal to its audience. This paper looks at the role photography plays in building social reality, showing the same scene from the same incident and how its representation may differ according to who makes the image, the protocols they follow, and also who these images are taken for.

Photographing Crime Scenes in 20th-Century London: Microhistories of Domestic Murder. By Alexa Neale

We are perhaps so used to ‘seeing’ crime scenes and being exposed to the minute details of murder investigations that its development as a method and process of criminal inquiry has been taken for granted. Neale’s excellent Photographing Crime Scenes provides a fascinating, valuable, and important insight into the use of forensic photographs to understand how crime scenes were understood historically. Focusing on domestic murders in London, Neale persuasively argues that the role of photography was most crucial in the courtroom and did not focus in detail, but ‘about visualizing a narrative in the courtroom than investigating and establishing that narrative in police detection’ (p. 2). Drawing attention to the cultural and social production of crime scene photography, Neale’s analysis emphasizes that these sources were not conceived of as visual facts, and draws attention to the ways in which class, race, and gender shaped these narratives and how crimes scenes were presented and received through the prosecution process and in court. Other sources, particularly the press and other forms of cultural media, are woven through Neale’s expert analysis of crime scene photography to demonstrate how these images were themselves a product of broader social and cultural processes.

Forensic Photography Concepts and Applications for Better Crime Scene Examination

"A picture is worth a thousand words," and crime scene photography is a case in point. All crime scenes begin with photography, which is done with the almost priority. The most efficient and straight forward way for an investigating officer to depict a crime scene is through photographs and criminal sketches. By documenting the original site and surroundings, crime scene photography serves to offer a true and accurate record of the crime scene and tangible evidence that was present. Regardless of how well a detective can orally describe a crime scene pictures can convey the same information more clearly and effectively because they freeze time and capture the evidence. A trial's forensic photography is an essential component. Additionally, crime scene images are frequently used as the basis for the decision.

Method for Classifying Crime Scene Photographs Based on Convolution Neural Network

Method for Classifying Crime Scene Photographs Based on Convolution Neural Network

A Systematic Literature Review on the Usage of Digital Photography at Crime Scene Investigation Process

The use of digital photography medium is dominantly used in the process of investigating criminal cases. Digital photography used in the investigation process is also known as crime scene photography, where photographic images are produced to collect evidence, documenting the scene, and subsequently, be used as a reference for criminal case investigation and prosecution process. Using systematic literature review (SLR), this study identifies the current practice of digital use of photography in the process of investigating criminal cases. Searches via electronic databases of indexed journals, namely, Scopus, Science Direct, Web of Science and Springer were conducted. Data is limited to these journals was produced within the years 2017 until 2021 as the latest research information. The findings consist of 28 papers that had met the criteria by which this study touched on digital photography technology such as DSLR Camera, Drone Photography, and CCTV.

Evaluation of digital panoramic images to support off-site bloodstain pattern analysis

ABSTRACT Crime scene photography plays a fundamental role in forensic investigations. Its primary purpose is the recording of the entire crime scene, both the context and specific details, for later recollection, analysis and presentation. Bloodstain pattern analysis (BPA) relies extensively on the recording of context and detail. This study evaluated the use of panoramic imaging for the recording of impact patterns at crime scenes to support the off-site determination of area of origin (AO). This evaluation used a commercially available hardware system that consisted of a robotized, tripod-mounted platform, interfaced with a digital camera, to provide an automated panoramic image capture process. Software was subsequently used to construct a digital panorama. Bloodstain pattern analysis software was then used for the off-site determination of AO from the panoramic image. The results of this research demonstrated that the developed method can be employed to effectively capture a panoramic image of an impact pattern with sufficient detail for accurate AO determination. The approach can enable crime scene officers to record impact patterns without extensive training on BPA or the recording of blood spatter. The approach also enables BPA experts to digitally analyse spatter information from a single image as opposed to evaluating multiple photographs.

Creative and crime scene photography: staged patricide and matricide as screen memories in Aida Chehrehgosha’s To Mom, Dad and My Two Brothers

Aida Chehrehgosha’s award-winning photography series To Mom, Dad and My Two Brothers (2008) in which the artist controversially stages the death of her abusive mother and father is examined in this essay as exemplifying a form of screen memories — a conscious psychodynamic strategy, introduced by Sigmund Freud, employed here to both expose and heal traumatic experiences. Challenging the dominant views in trauma theory and psychoanalysis regarding the role of visuality vis-à-vis narrativization, I claim that in Chehrehgosha’s series the visual works both to indicate the trauma as well as to point to its overdetermined, complex nature. Moreover, the photographs are revealed to be palimpsestic and hybrid in their implicit photographic gaze, blurring the line between scientific and aesthetic uses of photography, legal and artistic discourses, fundamentally questioning the experience of being a victim and a criminal. As such, the artwork is understood as a unique and complex photographic way to represent and address painful experiences and mixed affects — a palimpsestic approach to screening trauma.

An Evaluative Study on Resources, Training and Level of Knowledge in Handling Crime Scene Photography amongst Police Officials at Sikar District of Rajasthan

An Evaluative Study on Resources, Training and Level of Knowledge in Handling Crime Scene Photography amongst Police Officials at Sikar District of Rajasthan

Forensic science and fractal nature analysis

Forensic photography, also referred to as crime scene photography, is an activity that records the initial appearance of the crime scene and physical evidence in order to provide a permanent record for the court. Nowadays, we cannot imagine a crime scene investigation without photographic evidence. Crime or accident scene photographs can often be reanalyzed in cold cases or when the images need to be enlarged to show critical details. Fractals are rough or fragmented geometric shapes that can be subdivided into parts, each of which is a reduced copy of the whole. Fractal dimension (FD) is an important fractal geometry feature. There are many applications of fractals in various forensic fields, including image processing, image analysis, texture segmentation, shape classification, and identifying the image features such as roughness and smoothness of an image. Fractal analysis is applicable in forensic archeology and paleontology, as well. The damaged image can be reviewed, analyzed, and reconstructed by fractal nature analysis.

An autopsy study of suicidal hanging

Hanging is the most preferred method of Suicide. Individuals are known to use different Ligature material and suspend completely or partially. hence, it is important to understand the Parameters involved in it. Large number of Suicidal death are reported. To Understand Suicidal Hanging by studying different parameters involved in it like Ligature Material, Type of Knot. Sex and Age Group, involved, kind of Suspension and Position of knot. A total of 634 cases were studied . Crime scene examination was done only in those cases where their were Suspicion on the Suspension Deaths. Rest of the cases the crime scene photographs and investigating officer records were the inputs. Only Suicidal Hanging were Considered for the Study. Suicidal Hanging contributed to 6.5% of the Total Cases. The Ropes[27%%] and Stole [36%]Contributed to the Most Preferred Ligature Material and Shoe Lace contribute[0.5%] to the least preferred Material for Self Suspension. Complete Suspension was observed in 62% of cases. The Majority of the Victims were Females contributing to 62% of the Deaths. The Major Age Group[50.76%] Involved was between 21-30years and the Uneffected Age group were those in the Extremes of Life i.e 1-10 and 61-70years. A Slip Knot was used on 97.73% of suspensions. In 78% of Suspension the Position of the Knot was situated over the [Typical Hanging]Nape of Neck. Married Victims Contributed to 37.45% of cases. The different Parameters of Suicidal Hanging are necessary to understand the Suicidal Nature of Hanging.

An Evaluation of Role of Police Forensic Science Laboratories in Countering Terrorism in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

Forensic Science is a powerful tool to counter terrorism both in pre-incidence deterrence as well post-incident deterrence. The present study explores out the effectiveness of police Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) along with the significance and its role to counter terrorism in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa - Pakistan. Data were taken by using a Structured questionnaire from 217 respondents, including 99 legal practitioners (lawyers dealing criminal cases), 54 journalists (crime reporters from the different newspapers), and 64 police personnel (from the various ranks working in police department). A stratified proportionate random sampling technique as employed to find out the sample size for each stratum while a systematic sampling method was applied to select the respondents from the three chosen sample groups. A Chi-square and Gamma tests were employed to find out the relationship between independent and dependent variable. It was found that the forensic science laboratory has a significant relationship with countering terrorism including DNA tests, crime scene photography; and fingerprints are highly effective in criminal investigation. It was concluded from the study that capacities of forensic science laboratory needed to be enhanced to counter terrorism more efficiently. The study suggests that enhancing expertise in FSL on modern scientific grounds as framed to enhance the effectiveness of the use of facilities of FSL.

On the Discursive-Material Enactment of Criminal Violence: How Death and Injury Come to Matter to the Criminal Law

This article seeks to challenge the prevailing view that violence is legally actionable because human bodies are capable of experiencing pain, injury, and death. Drawing on literature in the area of new materialism, this article demonstrates how pain, injury, and death are not ontological properties of the flesh-and-bone body, but rather, they are the effects of how violence is made sense-able, knowable, as part of the criminal legal process. Here, I examine four of the materializing practices through which violence becomes sense-able to us: crime scene photography, forensic pathology, legal judgments, and bodily performance. If the effects of criminal violence can be traced to the discursive practices by which we observe, measure, think, and speak about bodies, it becomes much harder to sustain the view that human violence is exceptional because the human body is special.

Decoding the Crime Scene Photograph: Seeing and Narrating the Death of a Gangster

Because Arthur ‘Weegee’ Fellig’s crime scene photographs have become the standard for visually representing crime scenes in (American) popular culture, this paper examines the extra-legal lives of two of his images, both of which were produced at the site of a gangster’s death in 1936. To decode the crime scene photograph is to interrogate the ways in which we make sense of crime through seeing and narrating. To that end, this paper charts how these two crime images were contextualized first in a tabloid narrative that invited viewer identification with the law enforcer, and later in Weegee’s own autobiographical narrative as a hardboiled photographer. In contrast to these human ways of seeing and narrating, the images are then examined through computer vision. By moving across these different ways of human and nonhuman seeing, we are arrested anew by the crime scene photograph as different narrators make clear, often for different audiences, who and what it is that we are looking at. Our visual point of focus, in turn, tells us how we engage with crime images at the mediated intersection of law and popular culture; it reveals how viewers identify with the law as a result of an image’s visual structure, as well as through representational exchanges that blur the edges between fact and fiction.

Forensic Photography: A Visual and Legal Record of Crime Scene

Based on priority forensic photography is a source of documenting crime scenes. Currently it enables to signify a crime scene with every significant pieces of location and evidences. Adding to forensic investigation, crime scene photography provides a true and precise record of original scene and evidences relevant to surroundings. Crime scene photograph can illustrate a crime scene easily than verbal description by an investigator as it freezes time and records the evidences. It records all type of crime scenes such as fingerprints, impressions, injuries or bruises on skin in assault cases, human identification, bloodied body and knife in murder case etc. Scientific photography skills and techniques such as UV, IR and Fluorescence light filters are practiced to discover and preserve the hidden information during investigation. It is an integral part of criminal investigation by providing proper documented focused photographs to present actual story of the scene in the courtroom.

The Forensic Eye and the Public Mind: The Bertillon System of Crime Scene Photography

In fin de siècle France, Alphonse Bertillon—best known for his widely adopted system of criminal identification—pursued “other applications” for judicial photography, suggesting that photography might be used to procure “an exact, complete, and impartial” view of “locales, things, and beings.” Photography, Bertillon was suggesting, could preserve a crime scene. In many ways, crime scene photography seems like the logical fulfillment of what Allan Sekula termed the “evidentiary promise” of photography. Understanding crime scene photography as a form of evidence places it in the realm of empirical science, with the photograph preserving proof of misdeeds and aiding the detective's forensic pursuit of truth. But, perhaps surprisingly, this was not the use that Bertillon foresaw for crime scene photography. Instead he suggested that crime scene photography was destined for the courtroom, and for the eyes of the jury. There it would not be a vehicle of objective proof, but rather an emotional catalyst for conviction. This paper examines the Bertillon system of crime scene photography as a rhetorical strategy calibrated for emotional impact, showing how it attempted to move viewers from the space of investigation and uncertainty to the space of conviction.

Face detection based on multilayer feed‐forward neural network and Haar features

SummaryFast and accurate detection of a facial data is crucial for both face and facial expression recognition systems. These systems include internet protocol video surveillance systems, crime scene photographs systems, and criminals' databases. The aim for this study is both improvement of accuracy and speed. The salient facial features are extracted through Haar techniques. The sizes of the images are reduced by Bessel down‐sampling algorithm. This method preserved the details and perceptual quality of the original image. Then, image normalization was done by anisotropic smoothing. Multilayer feed‐forward neural network with a back‐propagation algorithm was used as classifier. A detection accuracy of 98.5% with acceptable false positives was registered with test sets from FDDB, CMU‐MIT, and Champions databases. The speed of execution was also promising. An evaluation of the proposed method with other popular detectors on the FDDB set shows great improvement.

Crime Scene Photography in England, 1895–1960

AbstractThis article discusses the development of techniques and practices of murder crime scene photography through four pairs of photographs taken in England between 1904 and 1958 and examines their “forensic aesthetic”: the visual combination of objective clues and of subjective aesthetic resonances. Crime scene photographs had legal status as evidence that had to be substantiated by a witness, and their purpose, as expressed in forensic textbooks and policing articles, was to provide a direct transfer of facts to the courtroom; yet their inferential visual nature made them allusive and evocative as well. Each of four pairs of photographs discussed reflects a significant period in the historical evolution of crime scene photography as well as an observable aesthetic influence: the earliest days of police photography and pictorialism; professionalization in the 1930s, documentary photography, and film noir; postwar photographic expansion to the suburban and middle class, advertising images of the family and home; and postwar elegiac landscape photography in the 1950s and compassion shown to infanticidal mothers. Crime scene photographs also demonstrate a remarkable shift in twentieth-century forensic technologies, and they reveal a collection of ordinary domestic and pastoral scenes at the moment when an act of violence made them extraordinary.

Evidence, memory and the malleable photograph

Abstract This article explores the capacity of the photograph to furnish evidence, which derives both from its indexicality and from the visual accuracy of the raw image. Photographs achieve the status of evidence not because the photograph itself has any implicit identity but rather because the State recognized that the photograph could provide proof of identification – mug shots – as early as 1850 when police departments hired photographers to take mug shots and crime scene photographs. Courts accepted the photograph as evidence as early as 1859 and continue today, even employing ‘Instagram’ officers whose job entails monitoring Instagram accounts of persons of interest. The article then explores why the photograph remains believable today to the public even with contemporary discourse about the malleability of the photograph.

Abortion Crime Scene Photography in Metropolitan London 1950–1968

Abortion Crime Scene Photography in Metropolitan London 1950–1968

Book Review: Privacy in the New Media Age, by Jon L. Mills

Privacy in the New Media Age. Jon L. Mills. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 2015. 248 pp. $29.95 hbk.This book's opening sentence proclaims the utterly obvious-the media and personal privacy are inherently in conflict. Its final sentence, however, avers an oftenoverlooked reality in a rah-rah First Amendment society that, Jon Mills assiduously argues, consistently-save for a few minor hiccups-privileges a free press over personal privacy. The waning societal value at stake, Mills concludes, after persuasively demonstrating during the intervening 182 pages that privacy jeopardized by both new technologies and expansive definitions of newsworthiness, is profound and fundamental: basic human dignity.Indeed, this a book that makes the cogent case for an increased emphasis on privacy and human dignity, though it nonetheless recognizes the importance of a free press. A quartet of what might be called Mills' maxims offered along the way illustrates his thesis:** global distribution and anonymity expand the risks of privacy intrusions, the traditional gatekeepers and editors who tempered the media with profes-sional judgment are disappearing from the scene and losing their importance.** no doubt that there more bad information coming from more sources than ever before. More individuals are being harmed and will be harmed. There an alternative. Accountability for wrong and harmful intrusions possible.** The general public becoming skeptical of the institutional press without become more confident in any particular alternative.** the real world, people matter as well as theory.Mills, former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives and dean emeritus of the University of Florida's Levin College of Law, truly a privacy expert-and not just as a scholar or an academic, but as an attorney and a practitioner. In 2010, he represented the family of Dawn Brancheau, a trainer at SeaWorld Orlando who was killed by a 6-ton orca whale named Tilikum, in its fight to keep the video and images of her death out of public view. Two decades prior to that, Mills represented the families of victims of serial killer Danny Harold Rolling in their efforts to keep out of the media's hands gruesome crime-scene photographs. In between, he was involved in efforts on behalf of Teresa Earnhardt to keep autopsy images of her late husband, NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt, from going viral on the Internet.Having more than earned his courtroom chops, Mill perhaps gives away his realworld bias and sense of pragmatism on page 27 of Privacy in the New Media Age. There he writes that reality, standing in contrast to the theoretical world, requires workable solutions to privacy intrusions rather than merely interesting theories that may generate another law review article. Amen to that, Jon Mills. As dean of a law school, he probably came across quite a few faculty members over the years who specialized in the fine art of publishing-into oblivion, mind you-the heavily footnoted theoretical.But rest assured, this book not that of a legal veteran rehashing tired or well-worn war stories. This fresh tome packed with the many modern disputes. For example, there are discussions of the 2014 appellate court rulings in both Obsidian Finance Group v. …