The high-tech 500,000 square foot facility in the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, is a perfect example of a dream come true. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) crime lab was the brainchild of J. Edgar Hoover, a young, enthusiastic, and visionary FBI director appointed in the 1920s and Special Agent Charles Appel. The Lab has reinvented itself through technological advancements, proving increasingly relevant and vital as a surveillance and law enforcement agency.
Hoover believed that science could play a fundamental role in analyzing criminal matters. Likewise, Appel envisioned that the Lab would offer information and criminological support to the law enforcement agencies, and emerging events only cemented this conviction. For instance, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929 provided the impetus for establishing the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory situated in Northwestern University, Chicago (Waggoner, 2007). The Criminology Laboratory was officially launched on November 24, 1932, few months after essential office equipment and supplies, including wiretapping and moulage kits, an ultraviolet light machine, and a microscope, found a dedicated room in the Old Southern Railway Building in Washington, D.C. Before occupying the dedicated, state-of-the-art facility it currently does in Quantico, Virginia, a Marine Corps base, the Lab underwent multiple relocations and renaming, a testimony to its dynamism.
Technological evolution is perhaps the single most powerful indicator of the Lab’s strides in solving crimes. During its inception, the Lab’s most advanced technology directory comprised an ultraviolet light machine, a microscope, a moulage kit, a wiretapping kit, photographic supplies, chemicals, and a drawing board (Waggoner, 2007). It means that the Lab could compare handwriting samples and typewritings, take and classify fingerprints, and moulage ballistics. Over the years, the Lab utilized advanced forensic technology to identify a criminal based on more than handwriting. Specifically, DNA, fingerprints, and voice could be analyzed to pinpoint the perpetrator of a given crime, identify the deceased, such as in a plane crash, and even determine the cause of death from autopsy reports and forensic analysis of the debris from a crash site (Waggoner, 2007). The technological evolution in the crime lab peaked with the establishment of fingerprint, DNA, and crime databases that allow forensic analysts to compare samples with increased convenience and speed. Today, the FBI can detect crime using cameras, trackers, drones, gunshot detection systems, and license plate scanners and leverage artificial intelligence in many unprecedented ways.
The technological advancements will affect the FBI’s Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory in the future. Waggoner (2007) observes that the police departments are understaffed and underequipped to keep up with the increasing burden of evolving crime. As such, advanced technology promises a better means of keeping society safe amidst scarce resources. For example, machine learning technology and GPS tracking darts can allow cameras to spot and notify law enforcement officers of a criminal’s presence. In brief, technology will allow the FBI’s Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory to conduct less intrusive surveillance and analyze subtle evidence of a crime, possibly at reduced costs and improved efficiency and precision.
In conclusion, the FBI’s Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory has undergone over 7.5 decades of evolution. What started as a vision of two men evolved into an intelligence agency, serving the U.S. and the world, thanks to its unwavering fascination over the potential of technology to revolutionize crime detection. As crimes take a global perspective and criminals devise new methods to spread panic and mayhem, the law enforcement agencies will have to stretch their tentacles further. Advanced technology allows the criminal justice system to bring felons to justice promptly and conveniently while minimizing the cost of doing so.
Reference
Waggoner, K. (2007). The FBI laboratory: 75 years of forensic science service. Forensic Science, 9(4), 1-4. Web.