Behind the tape
Expert advice to get the details right in your crime fiction, from serving police officer Lisa Cutts
I have an idea for a police procedural set in 1989. It involves a body discovered on school premises in violent circumstances. Based on your knowledge of police investigations how would the police handle such a situation? Also, what would female police detectives in the late 1980s have to have dealt with in terms of career obstacles?
Martin Quill, by email Even though it was set in a school, the investigation would still be dealt with as if the body was discovered anywhere else. The police would cordon off the scene, and depending on where the body was found and the size of the school, they would prevent anyone from entering the school or the area they had deemed to be the crime scene.
I joined the police in 1996 and encountered no problems as a woman, as well as there being a number of women DIs and DSs. There were not as many women as there were men, partly because women used to take career breaks when they were pregnant and often did not return. It was not the same set-up for flexible working and part-time police officers as there is today. It did exist in the mid1990s as I worked with some PCs and DCs who were not full-time officers, however there was less of them.
QWould police ever take a victim back to the scene of a crime as part of the interview process? For example, if a group of teenagers have been held against their will and are having difficulty remembering details, would police ever take one or more of them back to the place they were held to jog their memory?
ARachel Sargeant, by email
It’s unlikely to be honest. If they took the victim back, it would be the SIO’s decision and she or he would need to justify why they were doing it. If it were simply to remember details, the accusations from the defence at court would be that the victims did not remember of their own free will, but because the police told them certain facts. By taking them back to the scene, it could taint their evidence.
For juveniles they would need an appropriate adult with them in any case. I think any visit would be a real risk and jeopardise the investigation unless there was a crucial reason, and the police couldn’t get around it any other way.