General (page 2)
Scope of Work
Members of the General Section include scientists with forensic
specialties in the scientific areas of laboratory investigation,
field investigation, clinical work, communication, computer
investigation, education, research, and other emerging forensic
science disciplines. These scientists are employed or practicing
in the following areas of forensic activity: administrator,
accountant, archaeologist, artist/ sculptor (including facial
reconstruction), aviation accident investigator, ballistics
analyst (ammunition performance and wound interpretation),
computer-related crime investigator, computer specialist,
forensic consultant, coroner (non-pathologist), crime scene
investigator, medico-legal investigator, educator (potentially
all forensic areas), image enhancement specialist, marine
biologist, nurse examiner, photographer, polygraph examiner,
radiologist, researcher, rehabilitation specialist, social
worker - forensic applications, and speech scientist (voice
identification, enhancement of recordings, validation and
authentication of transcripts and/or recordings).
Forensic skull reconstructionist sculpting
a person's skull to depict a close creation of the look
of the person for identification purposes.
New areas of forensic study result from a combination of
unique problems faced by investigators and advances in natural
and social sciences. Many of the well-established disciplines
in the forensic sciences were nurtured in and emerged from
the General Section of the American Academy of Forensic
Sciences.
The advent of digital photography with its potential to
aid in the documentation of crime scenes and injuries, as
well as to speed up all aspects of photography from mug
shots to autopsy, creates an important area of research
and development. Such photographs present many challenges
and the burdens of easy alteration must be balanced with
the benefits of speed and economy. These issues extend to
the computer imaging of crime scenes, suspect composites,
and victim characteristics for possible identification.
The reliability and scientific accuracy of computer recreations
of crime scene events also remains an area for much-needed
research.
Tape recordings and digital voice identification protocols,
acoustic and speech analysis continues to be an evolving
area of research and application. With capacities to disguise
voices by off-the-shelf technology, the investigation of
underlying acoustic patterns has become one of many important
areas of both technological and linguistic research.
Ecological awareness brings the investigation of crime relating
to the various aspects of hazardous waste, illegal dumping,
and other such crimes against the environment to those with
expertise in areas such as the forensic marine sciences,
and many other sciences applied to environmental issues.
Ecological crime involves some notion of gain, quite often
financial in nature. The development of sophisticated accounting
software for the general public leads to increases in both
accounting errors and outright fraud. To help unearth the
details of financial schemes, money laundering, and digital
fraud on the Internet, an important area of investigation
involving forensic accounting has been developed.
Computer forensics has become important because recent intrusions
to gain or corrupt information in other computer systems
by criminals using computer technology to support their
activities has become a major crime activity.
