65313 Forensic Intelligence

Description

The subject builds upon the discipline knowledge and skills developed in 65242 Principles of Forensic Science and 65316 Criminalistics. Over the years, forensic science has primarily positioned itself as a service provider for the criminal justice system. Unfortunately, this focus on the criminal justice system has limited its capacity to provide knowledge about crime and deviant activities. This subject introduces this added value of forensic science. The role of the trace in forensic science, intellectual reasoning and generic processes to apply forensic intelligence in practice is presented. Through a set of complementary lectures, computer labs and independent online learning activities, the students gain theoretical and practical knowledge about the use of a variety of forensic traces in an intelligence perspective. Students develop their critical thinking and inquiry-based skills as they extract a profile from a trace or a case, compare this profile to others, highlight links or trends in the data and finally communicate their findings in a presentation and a short report.