The Criminal Justice Program at SCC has taken on some essential new equipment in its program at Southeast Community College, and this new equipment has made way for a few shifts in class structure as well.
Just this school year, the program has been introduced to something called an electrostatic fingerprint lifter.
For instance, with this tool students are trained so that, if investigators needed to take a footprint from somewhere like the hood of a car, they would be able to. To do so, one would put the film on the car, run an electric current to it, and lift the footprint off of the car onto a metal plate, which can then be photographed.
Also in the last year, an alternative light source for identifying blood and other body fluids has been brought into the area, along with infrared cameras that allow students to photograph crime scenes.
Instructor Keith Mabon of the Beatrice Campus discussed the importance of familiarizing students with the equipment in a hands on fashion during training: “It’s not enough just to know the theory behind criminal justice—you need to have the application.”
This brings us to the recent splitting of one class into two. There is now a “Criminal Investigations 1” and a “Criminal Investigations 2” because students must first learn basic skills and evidence collection, and then move on to understanding elements of a crime and interrogation.
To break it down, all of the new equipment mentioned previously is used in the first class, where students learn basics of criminal justice; they are taught and trained on all of the essential equipment.
Criminal Investigations 2 deals with voluntary and involuntary elements of homicide, first-degree murder, manslaughter and so on.
“This class gives students the means to judge reasons for arrest when they are out in the field,” says Mabon.