Investigation and Evidence Concepts

Concepts describing how a crime is investigated and how evidence is developed and preserved: an offender's characteristic pattern of behavior, the documented handling history that keeps evidence admissible, the practice of inferring an unknown offender's characteristics from crime scene evidence, an investigation that has gone unsolved past the normal active period, the founding principle that contact between two objects leaves mutual trace evidence, and an undercover technique in which investigators pose as willing participants in a crime to catch an offender in the act. Belongs here: any concept describing an investigative method or an evidentiary practice. Does not belong here: concepts about the crime itself, grouped under Crime Typologies, or about a case's later reconsideration for error, grouped under Wrongful Conviction, Error and Legal Defense.