Investigation: A Comprehensive Guide to the Basic Principles, Procedures and Forensic Processes equips prospective investigators with the principles that they must know and apply to successfully carry out their duties. The aim of this book is not to train prospective investigators in investigating crime, but to make them aware of the principles of criminal investigation that will enable them to bring an investigation to a successful conclusion. For any investigating officer to be successful in pursuing the objectives of criminal investigation, he or she must take cognisance of the five questions rule:

• What evidence and information do I have?
• What evidence and information do I need?
• Where am I going to find the evidence and information?
• How am I going to obtain the evidence and information?
• What am I going to do with it?

Key features:

• Incorporates forensic guides for investigators that are at a crime scene including guidelines for completing forms (eg kit collection forms), checklists, descriptive images, examples, tables and figures, extracts and samples, forms, reports, registers and notices
• Both theoretical and practical

• Chapter 1: Ethics and the role of the investigator in the investigation of crime 
• Chapter 2: Characteristics of criminal and forensic investigation
• Chapter 3: The important principles in criminal investigation
• Chapter 4: The role of the crime scene in the investigation of crime 
• Chapter 5: Evidence 
• Chapter 6: Documentation of a crime scene and of the investigation of a case 
• Chapter 7: Arrest and detention 
• Chapter 8: Statements
• Chapter 9: The case docket and testifying in court
• ANNEXURES 
• GLOSSARY
• INDEX