Evaluación de la formación en entomología forense y criminalística en personal implicado en la investigación criminal

Abstract

Forensic Entomology is the study of the application of insects and other arthropods as tools and evidence in legal matters. It is used especially as a support in death scene investigations due to the wide potential information that can be taken from arthropods. To do so, both a deep knowledge of the fauna involved in each criminal case and the development of its life cycle are needed. For experimental researches, animal models that, simulating human decomposition, provide data that are later extrapolated to real cases are employed. That is in itself a valuable tool to analyze what happened at the scene of a crime. Forensic Entomology puts at the service of the police officer capabilities for the investigation of homicides, for the search for missing persons and for fight against drug trafficking or crimes committed against vulnerable victims when the miasis process occur. It is also used for cases with wildlife, valuation of the crime scene, search of toxics in corpses, cases related to stored food or illegal trade of protected species. But, undoubtedly, its application to the establishment of the post-mortem interval in corpses in advanced state of decomposition is the largest of its contributions to the investigation of violent deaths or suspected criminality. However, the use of Entomology in criminal investigations in Spain is an infrequent fact, due, among other reasons, to the lack of knowledge about this forensic science. It will be difficult for an investigator to resort to Forensic Entomology if he is not aware of what this science can offer him, and a forensic specialist in criminal scenes will not be able proceed to collect entomological evidences for his later examination if he has not been trained for it. The rapid advance of the forensic sciences, the lack of knowledge about Forensic Entomology as well as an unreformed procedural law has produced a formative bias in the personnel responsible for investigating the crimes committed in the jurisdiction of the Civil Guard. The aim of this research is to know the level of training, knowledge and opinions on the use of Forensic Entomology in criminal investigations carried out by investigators and specialists in criminalistics of the Civil Guard. The evaluation of knowledge has a common part for both types of agents and a differentiated and more technical-scientific assessment for those who develop criminalistics abilities. Materials and methods: The study is descriptive, transversal and prospective. The sample of investigative agents has been 143, while the sample of specialists in laboratory criminology has been 116. To evaluate the sociodemographic and labor characteristics, the training and opinions on Forensic Entomology, a specific questionnaire has been designed with closed-ended test questions with several possible answers, one for each type of professional. Results and conclusions: 55% of the investigators surveyed have only received 2 hours of theoretical training in Forensic Entomology and 57% of the personnel of the criminalistics laboratory have not received any training hours during the Basic Criminalistics Course. The poor training that respondents have is preeminently theoretical, since only 17% of the laboratory specialists have done some field practice on FE, which is an indispensable requirement for building capabilities in the collection of entomological evidence for those responsible for carrying out the crime scene investigations. The correct collection of the evidence will directly affect the quality of the entomological report and the conclusions it provides. 71.4% of the investigators surveyed and 76.9% of the laboratory staff state this science in the useful-very useful range in terms of their utility in criminal investigations although a specific training program for this science has not yet been developed by the Civil Guard, even when a protocol has been established by SECRIM, Technical Procedures Guide (GPT-ID-14) on Collecting Entomological Evidence but no kit has been established or distributed for the collection of such indications. From these reasons and other data extracted in the study we consider that the training in this field is very low and that the criminal investigations in the scope of the Civil Guard are missing a tool as is Forensic Entomology, especially, but not only, for the determination of the post-mortem interval in cases of homicide, the evaluation of the place of the crime or investigations related to fauna, such as domestic, wild and stable.