The forensic investigation is one of the first steps in the criminal investigation process concerning home invasion robberies. The forensic investigation consists of objectively capturing the crime scene as it is when starting the investigation. Regarding home invasion robberies, the most important traces are fingerprints and DNA which are used for identification of individual suspects. Currently, there is little knowledge about the process of a secured trace to a result used in court.
Crime scene investigators are confronted with multiple decisions during the investigation and it is important to know with what goal in mind an investigator acts on the crime scene, as this influences the decision-making. The forensic data obtained from the forensic investigation is shared within a forensic data infrastructure. This infrastructure consists of the following criminal justice system partners involved in the process from crime scene investigation to conviction: crime scene investigators, detectives, experts at forensic laboratories, prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges. These partners are all contributing in different ways and at different times.
The forensic data infrastructure comes with sensibilities and tensions, such as tunnel vision, incomplete crime scene investigation reports, misunderstandings and one-way communication. Solving these sensibilities and tensions is crucial to the functioning of the infrastructure.
By use of a questionnaire, insights are provided into the goals and aspects of the forensic investigation that are important to the involved partners. The goals important to crime scene investigators differ little from the goals of other involved partners. The questionnaire results are reflected on in an expert reflection session. This session is part of the participatory design, which contributes in creating a mutual understanding of needs between partners. A second expert session is developed to fulfill these needs and implement solutions to solve sensibilities and tensions in an optimized forensic investigation.
The optimization process includes the optimization of the forensic investigation itself and the optimization of the forensic data infrastructure by proposing a structured forensic investigation scheme. A new experiment is presented to analyze the optimized forensic investigation.