Hello everyone!

If you are thinking about studying Criminology at Surrey, this might be something you are interested in! In your first year, you will have to take the module ‘Fundamentals of Forensics Science for Social Scientist’ and this module has an unconventional and fun exam which is the Crime Scene Investigation Day.

During the CSI day, you will be asked to examine 3 crime scenes as a forensic scientist and write up a report on the case. You will be divided into small groups and when you first arrive at the exam, they will give you gloves and a forensic suit to wear as a real crime scene investigator. Then you will need a means of taking photographs, a pen, pencil and a notebook to analyse the three crime scenes. You are then asked to attend all three scenes, describe the events that you believed occurred at each scene and deduce the crime(s) committed.

During the examination, you will need to analyse the crime scenes, collect and classify the evidence, take notes and pictures and make crime scene sketches. The crime scenes are realistic and will lead you to find the crime committed and write the statement and the Locus Report. The statement should contain all the information needed to communicate what you saw, what you found, how you dealt with the scene and what you believe was going on, based on the recovered evidence. The locus report states the identifies and explains the place where something occurred, it also contains sketch plans, photographs and the written report of the area.

This assignment has been particularly fun, in my opinion, because we had to step into a realistic (fake) crime scene and act like professionals recovering evidence and analysing everything. The scenes were highly realistic with also a fake body and fake blood which made it extremely interesting.

I hope this was interesting and you will be able to have this fun exam in the future as well!

Carola