Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
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Your next book is Hans Gross’s Criminal Investigation, a Practical Handbook for Magistrates, Police Officers and Lawyers, from 1891.
Yes. This is a handbook, but sections read like literature. The Austrian jurist Hans Gross was part of the era’s coterie of forensic pioneers – but while the others were doctors, he was an attorney. So he took the science of criminal investigation and translated it into colloquial language. The result is a handbook that ordinary investigators could read – as could you or I.
In addition to describing the new techniques in criminal detection, Gross discusses what kind of person the investigator needs to be. Some of the passages are almost inspirational. For example: ‘An investigating officer must possess the vigour of youth, energy ever on the alert, robust health and extensive acquaintance with all branches of law. He ought to know men, proceed skilfully, and possess liveliness and vigilance. Tact is indispensable, true courage is required.’
And it holds up over time?
Gross’s book would be useful to this day. It’s an enormous volume, covering everything from collecting evidence to maintaining an uncontaminated crime scene. Gross also writes about the sociology of criminals, and about how to tell if a suspect is faking insanity – which was quite common in those days.
He also writes presciently about the proper way to conduct an interrogation. He makes it clear that you should never use torture in the course of an investigation. You need to be clever and persistent, and eventually the suspect will unburden himself to you. That’s a striking observation, given our disgraceful recent history in that area.
Whereas previously, the conventional wisdom was that torture was in fact a good way to get information?
Yes. They would round up the usual suspects, pressure them to the point of torture, and hope someone cracked. Their success rate was quite low. At the time, other books by lawyers were coming out on how torture is a terrible idea in an investigation – not only morally, but also in terms of gaining accurate testimony. But it was Gross who wrote the authoritative textbook on the subject.
What were the new techniques at that time? They didn’t have fingerprinting yet, did they?
Fingerprinting became popular in the early 1900s. It had been discovered before then, but it wasn’t in broad use. Prior to fingerprints, scientists used footprints and scientific measurements of body parts in order to identify criminals and suspects. They were also quite advanced in their analysis of hair fibres and particles, and in their ability to detect blood and semen stains.
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Douglas Starr is co-director of the Graduate Program in Science and Medical Journalism at Boston University. His first book, Blood: An Epic History of Medicine and Commerce, received wide critical acclaim and was turned into a series by PBS. His writings on science, medicine and public health have appeared in, among others, The New Republic and The LA Times, and on NPR. His second and most recent book is The Killer of Little Shepherds, about the French serial killer Vacher and the birth of modern forensic science.
