WATCH: How crimes are solved. Sneak peek at the Festival of Crime

The News, Portsmouth

Wannabe crime fighters - May the Force be with you at the Festival of Crime on 4th May 2024

Transcript

00:00 So my name is Alex Salah, I am a forensic technician here at the University of Portsmouth.

00:06 Today we are in Victoria House in one of our crime scene simulation spaces.

00:12 In terms of the set up that we have for today, this was put together for our level 4, so

00:18 first year students, primarily looking at finger marks but also suspected stains at

00:25 a crime scene.

00:26 So what we do is we train them how to document those and how to recover them appropriately

00:30 like a CSI would at a crime scene.

00:33 This is what we would expect our students to do when they come in here as well.

00:36 It all starts with doing a visual examination of the area, so we need to be able to locate

00:42 our suspected area first and if we have something, a stain that we believe to be blood, we would

00:50 condense something called a presumptive test.

00:53 The presumptive test used for today was Casamia and the way this works is you are looking

00:57 for an instantaneous reaction after you use the Casamia reagent on blood, on a small amount

01:05 of suspected blood that you recover from your surface.

01:10 You apply a catalyser in the form of hydrogen peroxide to speed up the reaction and you

01:16 get an instantaneous, you should get an instantaneous colour change into pink.

01:21 That means that the test is positive, therefore your suspected stain can be referred to as

01:27 apparent blood from that stage and you would proceed to recover the apparent blood using

01:33 two swabs.

01:34 You do a wet swab and a dry swab.

01:36 With the swabs, they obviously have to go in a specific evidence bag.

01:42 So this is a biohazard bag.

01:43 This is to indicate that your swabs have got a potential biohazard on them.

01:49 So to do with some of the other evidence at the scene, if it's something that is a breathable

01:55 or something made of fabric, so if it's something like a piece of clothing or a pillowcase such

02:02 as in this case, you would bag it in a breathable medium.

02:06 You would use something like a paper bag just to make sure that it doesn't get mouldy in

02:09 transport or in storage before it gets looked at in the lab if it comes to that.

02:16 So whilst most of the techniques that I did today are traditional in the sense of how

02:23 forensics used to be conducted a good few years ago as well, we nowadays try to do everything

02:30 a bit more visual, a bit more non-intrusive.

02:33 We try to touch evidence less whilst still being able to look at it in enough detail.

02:38 So the light source that I used for today, specifically the light source that I used,

02:44 is capable of employing different wavelengths of light and we can look at a multitude of

02:51 different stains, whether they are visible or they are invisible, so not necessarily

02:56 there for us to see with our naked eye, in order for us to locate the stains and proceed

03:03 with the examination and with the recovery.

03:06 So they're very much visual examination techniques, more or less I would say the future of forensic

03:11 studies and forensic investigations.

03:13 In regards to what the students learn and what the public would learn on this particular

03:18 day, tell us a little bit about that please.

03:21 Hopefully it should be a good, fun and varied day for people to obviously come and enjoy.

03:28 We'll be looking from our perspective, we'll be looking at all these different techniques

03:30 in forensics, both traditional but also evolving, the more visual examinations that we tend

03:38 to do nowadays.

03:41 And hopefully it's a good, interesting experience for everyone attending and we look forward

03:46 to seeing you there.

03:47 So my name is Amy Meenaham, I'm a lecturer in the School of Criminology and Criminal

03:51 Justice Studies at the University of Portsmouth and my research looks at understanding offending

03:57 decision making, particularly in relation to residential burglary.

04:00 So we're doing a research project that's part of a bigger project, helping us to better

04:05 understand offending behaviour and to understand the behaviour of burglars while they navigate

04:12 an environment.

04:13 So looking at things like target selection decisions but also looking at what happens

04:17 when they're actually inside the crime scene.

04:19 So our research is built on quite a lot of research that's been done over decades by

04:24 talking to burglars and understanding why they do what they do and how they go about

04:28 making those decisions.

04:29 But we know that because burglars can actually be considered to be quite expert at what they

04:34 do, a lot of their decision making is below their conscious awareness.

04:38 So because of that we've started to create a programme of research that helps us to actually

04:41 come closer to observing offending behaviour in real time.

04:45 Now obviously there are ethical issues with watching somebody do a burglary in real life

04:48 so instead we've developed a programme of research that uses simulations to be able

04:53 to replicate a neighbourhood and watch what burglars do in that environment.

05:00 So we've done a lot of research looking at individual burglars, so taking these sort

05:05 of simulations into prisons and asking experienced burglars to show us what they do when they

05:12 undertake an actual burglary.

05:14 But we also know that quite a lot of particularly younger burglars tend to work in either pairs

05:18 or groups.

05:19 So by only asking one burglar what they do we're missing out on quite a lot of that collaborative

05:23 decision making.

05:25 So working alongside colleagues at the University of Twente in the Netherlands we've created

05:31 a co-offender simulation that allows us to get more than one person to burgle a property

05:36 at the same time.

05:37 At the moment we're trialling it with students so we're just making sure that the sim works

05:42 well and we're also looking to see whether people do interact with each other in virtual

05:46 reality in the way that we hope that they will.

05:49 And then we'll obviously be able to bring that into research with actual burglars in

05:55 due course.

05:56 You're opening the doors to the public on the 4th of May.

06:00 Tell us what will visitors be expecting to cry out and say?

06:05 You can undertake a virtual burglary yourselves.

06:07 So we'll have the simulation set up, we'll have the VR headset so come along, you can

06:11 have a play with the technology and we can talk to you about what we're doing with the

06:16 research and how this can help us to better understand offending behaviour but also understand

06:21 how you can better protect your homes as well.

06:24 So you can undertake a virtual burglary either on your own or with a friend, family member,

06:29 whoever you can bring along to the event with.

06:30 [END OF TRANSCRIPT]

06:31 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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