ADVANCE IN CRIMINOLOGY

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 181, 2 July 1936, Page 6

ADVANCE IN CRIMINOLOGY

In Europe the practical results achieved by scientific criminologists outrival the wildest exploits of fictional writers. Every criminal always ieaves some trace behind. To discover and preserve these traces is the task of the scientific policeman. Dr Poller of Vienna has devised a process known as “maulage’’ (literally modelling) by which such minute traces as tool marks ieft on a window sill or teeth indentations on fruit or other food can be plastically produced for purposes of evidence. Motor tracks in snow, or in dust so delicate that a siug-le breath would; blow them away, are sprayed with a fixative until they harden; sensitive clays are then laid over the tyre marks, and an impression secured. M. Locard, the famous criminologist,, has evolved a new system of criminal identification known as “poroscopy,” by which the faintest imprint of a few pores on a criminal’s finger—less than one fivethousandth part of a complete fingerprint—can be made to serve as infallible proof of his implication in a crime. lly analysing microscopic sections of thread, dirt, or blood found under the fingernails of a murdered man, Locard can in many cases tell his men whom to look for. Locard is the comparatively young; and very able chief of the municipal detective laboratory of Lyons, Prance, where he accomplishes his marvels on a salary of £IBO a year.

The American criminologists are developing their science. Laboratory analyses of ashes enable technicians to say, in arson cases, whether gasoline, kerosene, or other specific inflammables were used in starting a fire. T. 13. Gompert, of California, has devised a sj'stem for classifying human Hair. He has found nearly 12,000 varieties, all differing in colour, shape, and texture, and has given each hair a type number. Unce in a murder case he went over a carpet with a vacuum cleaner, and picked up four hairs all corresponding to the hair found on the head of a suspect who was later convicted. The list could be prolonged into a very litany of marvels; yet so far as. the United States police are concerned, to the majority these scientific aids to crime control do not exist. The Commissioners and Chiefs of Police in England, Trance, and Germany are without exception university men with a doctor’s degree; they devote their lives to the profession of police service; they hold their office and perform their duties independent of political interference. Their reputations are built upon their successful utilisation of laboratory techniques. A candidate for the Metropolitan Police of London must pass an examination which includes mathematics, modern languages, general history, physics, chemistry, and biology. At. the satisfactory conclusion of this examination he attends the Metropolitan Police College for 15 months, during which term he studies law, ballistics, accountancy, and all modern methods of criminal investigation and detection. Criminals have become more clever than ever previously, but not clever enough to beat the laboratory.