Stages of an Investigation Process

Stages of an Investigation Process

There are several stages in an investigation process:

• the initial response to reported crime - this is where a police officer or emergency service first attend the scene or the victim to collect any evidence and witness statements.
• preliminary and follow-up investigations - this is when a police officer then follows up leads and investigates the local area to collect more witness statements and possibly gather new information related to the case.
• the investigation plan - a police officer in charge of the case, normally a detective, would create an investigation plan where each person on the case would be given a specific job to do, such as collecting evidence from the surrounding area of the scene. 
• an incident room - an incident room is set up, normally in missing people cases, where the scene of crime is as this is useful to collect a large amount of evidence in a short period of time as the local community comes together to help by giving witness statements and potential leads for the investigation.
• investigating leads - this is where detectives will follow up any information they have collected and see if it has any potential new evidence for the case.
• researching and analysing facts - facts can come in many forms, forensic evidence, witness statements, intelligence - e.g. previous convictions of suspects, life style etc. These facts can be very useful in a case and can lead to a conviction of a suspect.
• identifying patterns and links - after analysing the evidence, the case then starts to link together and point towards suspects and locations.
• process of elimination - when all the evidence has been collected and analysed, the police then, through process of elimination, remove suspects from the investigation and then come up with a prime suspect who they can convict of the crime.
• ethical considerations, use of press, media and other agencies - there are many ethical issues to consider in cases such as the April Jones case and particularly cases involving children. Use of the press can be very useful in some cases such as the Philpott case and the Madeleine McCann case where the parents are put in front of the cameras to hopefully try to make them slip up with any new evidence or a confession for example, as the pressure of the media can provide shocking results.
• report writing and presentation of evidence in court - this is once a suspect has been arrested and is awaiting trial, where a case file is put together with all the evidence enclosed and a final report containing the analysis of the evidence and the conclusion drawn by the CID.

Not all of these stages are necessary in an investigation. These stages can also be switched round depending on the case.

The initial response to the moors murders was: when David Smith rang the police with his wife Maureen, he was taken to the police station for questioning and so they could take his clothes as evidence and get a witness statement. A police officer then went to Wardle Brook Avenue and arrested Myra Hindley and Ian Brady and searched the house where they found the body of Edward Evans, this led into the preliminary investigation. During Smith's witness statement, he told the police that Brady had asked him to bring over the books that he had borrowed that could be incriminating towards either himself or Brady. He also told the police that Brady had a "thing about railways stations" so this lead the police to search the property further and the nearest train stations for left luggage in Brady's name. They found a suitcase filled with the books that David had spoke about, nine pornographic images of a young girl tied up and gagged and a thirteen minute tape recording of her pleading for help and to be let go. This was later to be confirmed as Lesley Ann Downey. Ann Downey, Lesley's mother had to listen to the tape to confirm that it was her daughter's voice on the recording.

These investigation steps can also by rearranged depending on the type of crime. For example, if a child disappears, an incident room is usually one of the first steps in the investigation. An incident room is usually set up within the local community to where the child disappeared from as this is an easier way for the local community to help the police in trying to find the child. Incident rooms usually have their own phone number set up so if any members of the public ring up with any potential information, they get directed straight away to the incident room to the team dealing with the case. The reason why an incident room was not efficient in this case was because the children were taken from their local area, not Brady's, so therefore it was more difficult to use an incident room as there was no evidence or witnesses in the local area.

In this investigation, there were a few steps that were not followed such as the incident room as the children disappearing were spread far away from each other, so without communication between the police forces, Brady and Hindley weren't caught until they'd murdered five children. If the police forces had a database to where case files could be uploaded, they could have been caught sooner. The lack of communication between different police forces prevented Brady and Hindley from being caught and arrested sooner.