The Scientific Detection of Crime' 



By Charles Sannie 



Professor of Organic Chemistry 



National Museum of Natural History 



Paris 



Evert human society, even the least advanced, has been obliged, in 

 the face of certain antisocial acts imperiling its very existence, to draw 

 a distinction between lawful and unlawful conduct. The concept of 

 crime and misdemeanor is thus inseparable from the concept of so- 

 ciety itself, and the struggle against crime is a social necessity of over- 

 whelming importance. 



Although it may appear self-evident, this idea has not always been 

 fully grasped, because it was overshadowed, for a long time, by re- 

 ligious considerations. All religious doctrines lay down moral laws, 

 defining right and wrong and holding out the prospect of reward for 

 virtue and punishment for evil. They correspond to the rules of so- 

 cial defense which are essential to community life. Parallel to re- 

 ligious rules, legislators have drawn up codes of behavior, listing 

 legitimate acts on the one hand, and antisocial acts on the other, the 

 latter being forbidden and subject to penalties varying according to 

 the gravity of the offense. 



In order to enforce the law, the first step is to discover the crime 

 and then to trace the guilty party. This is the principal task of the 

 judge or of the officer of the law responsible for establishing that an 

 offense has been committed, for identifying the offender, collecting 

 proof of his guilt, and discovering his motive. The file transmitted to 

 the judge must contain the complete story of the crime and enable 

 the judge to estimate the criminal's responsibility and inflict upon him 

 the penalty provided for by the law. 



Thus it is the examining magistrate — or his assistant, the police- 

 man — who is the first to learn the facts of a crime. By making a sys- 

 tematic study of the conditions, circumstances, and environment in 

 which the crime was committed, he manages to reconstruct the facts 



^Reprinted by permission from Impact of Science on Society, vol. 4, No. 8, 

 Autumn 1953, publlslied by UNESCO. 



337 



