Dissecting a Criminal Investigation

Despite the considerable attention criminologists devote to the study of policing, they tend to ignore one of its most important functions. Detectives comprise approximately 16% of law enforcement personnel and play a major role in the public’s image of the police through their successes or failures. This scholarly lacuna is even more surprising given the gateway position held by police investigators; unless a crime is solved and an individual arrested, the entire remainder of the criminal justice system—prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, juries, probation, prisons, parole, rehabilitation—fails to come into play. What research that has explored this function has been primarily interested in organizational and technical aspects of detective work. Here, I take a different approach by dissecting criminal investigations to expose their underlying structure—what they involve, how they fail, and ways they might be improved. Specific areas of interest include the functional phases of an investigation, the definition and nature of evidence, and the systemic structure of criminal investigative failures. The Gail Miller-David Milgaard murder investigation in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, is used as a case study.