Forensic science is the application of scientific technology to provide accurate and objective information reflecting the events that occurred in a crime. This investigation involves analyzing the physical evidence and expert testimony and provides training the recognition, collection and safeguarding of evidences. The subdivisions in forensic investigation are Criminalistics, Computational forensics, Digital forensics, Forensic Anthropology, Forensic DNA analysis, Forensic Toxicology, Forensic dactyloscopy, Forensic Podiatry, Forensic seismology, Forensic serology, Forensic limnology, Forensic astronomy, Lie Detection, Questioned document examination, Brain Mapping.
The branches of forensic investigation are Pathology, Psychology, and Odontology, Physical science by using chemistry, physics and geology to ID and to compare with the crime scene evidence. The other one is Biology which relates to blood, body fluids, hair and fibers entomology. The four major federal crime labs are FBI, Drug Enforcement administration (DEA), Bureau of alcohol, Tobacco firearms and explosives, US postal inspection service and US Fish and wild life service.
Forensic comes from Latin word from “forensic”, which comes from a public place where senators and others debated and held judicial proceedings in roman period. Criminalistics is the scientific examination of physical evidence for lawful purposes where as in criminology includes the psychological angle, studying the crime scene for a reason, traits, and behavior that will help to interpret the evidence.
The psychology of eye witness depends on three stages that are encoding, storage and retrieval. The factors affecting the eyewitness are stress violence and unconscious transference which comes under encoding stage where as in storage stage it depends on time factors. In retrieval stage relates to expectations and misremembering. The crime scene mappings are Azimuth, triangulation, baseline mapping and grid mapping. The major developments of forensic science are science of spectroscopy, fingerprint identification, identification of human blood groups, mass spectrometer and DNA double helix.