Analyze forensic evidence to solve crimes
Most of the output can be produced by software today.
Software can pull the data, run the comparison and write up what it found. The accuracy depends almost entirely on whether it is wired into the real system of record rather than a stale copy, which is the problem the tools and auth layer exists to solve.
| How automatable | Mostly automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Analysis and evaluation work |
| Jobs that do it | 2 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Builders, Tools and auth |
| O*NET activity | Analyzing Data or Information (4.A.2.a.4) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 2 occupations that perform it.
- Participate in forensic activities, such as tooth and bone structure identification, in conjunction with police departments and pathologists.
- Collect evidence from crime scenes, storing it in conditions that preserve its integrity.
- Collect impressions of dust from surfaces to obtain and identify fingerprints.
- Analyze gunshot residue and bullet paths to determine how shootings occurred.
- Visit morgues, examine scenes of crimes, or contact other sources to obtain evidence or information to be used in investigations.
- Confer with ballistics, fingerprinting, handwriting, documents, electronics, medical, chemical, or metallurgical experts concerning evidence and its interpretation.
- Use chemicals or other substances to examine latent fingerprint evidence and compare developed prints to those of known persons in databases.
- Examine and analyze blood stain patterns at crime scenes.
- Examine firearms to determine mechanical condition and legal status, performing restoration work on damaged firearms to obtain information, such as serial numbers.
- Compare objects, such as tools, with impression marks to determine whether a specific object is responsible for a specific mark.
- Determine types of bullets and specific weapons used in shootings.
- Examine physical evidence, such as hair, biological fluids, fiber, wood, or soil residues to obtain information about its source and composition.
What we would actually use
One recommendation rather than a shortlist, because a shortlist is just your problem handed back. This is what we would buy for analysis and evaluation work, and what it costs.
Start in the assistant with an export of the real data, because the accuracy problem here is a stale copy rather than a weak model. Make, at $9 a month, is the cheapest way to put the pull on a schedule once the analysis is worth repeating.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
2 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Analyze biological or chemical substances or related data”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.