2021
DOI: 10.1177/19253621211002515
|View full text |Cite
|
Sign up to set email alerts
|

Teaching Forensic Science to the American Police and Public: The Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory, 1929-1938

Abstract: Established in 1929, Northwestern University’s Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory (SCDL), America’s first independent forensic crime laboratory, undertook a wide range of scientific case work during the 1930s, including toxicology, firearms identification, polygraph testing, the analysis of questioned documents and bacteriology; its mission being to provide Chicago with a world-class forensic science service. Alongside this mission, however, a key ambition of the SCDL’s founders was to forensically educate … Show more

Help me understand this report

Search citation statements

Order By: Relevance

Paper Sections

Select...

Citation Types

0
1
0

Year Published

2021
2021
2021
2021

Publication Types

Select...
1

Relationship

0
1

Authors

Journals

citations
Cited by 1 publication
(1 citation statement)
references
References 10 publications
0
1
0
Order By: Relevance
“…In a study of the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory (SCDL) of Northwestern University during the 1930s, Heather Wolffram chronicles the lectures, training activities, and World’s Fair exhibit through which SCDL personnel attempted to assert a new role for laboratory-based forensic services within policing. Despite offering new capabilities in ballistics and other fields, the SCDL’s efforts had ambivalent results: police officials’ resistance to an expanded role for science in law enforcement as well as a lack of finances meant that the SCDL struggled in its outreach efforts up to 1938, when it became part of the Chicago Police Department (17).…”
mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In a study of the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory (SCDL) of Northwestern University during the 1930s, Heather Wolffram chronicles the lectures, training activities, and World’s Fair exhibit through which SCDL personnel attempted to assert a new role for laboratory-based forensic services within policing. Despite offering new capabilities in ballistics and other fields, the SCDL’s efforts had ambivalent results: police officials’ resistance to an expanded role for science in law enforcement as well as a lack of finances meant that the SCDL struggled in its outreach efforts up to 1938, when it became part of the Chicago Police Department (17).…”
mentioning
confidence: 99%