Does anyone know any information on Forensics?

Here is a decription of the types of jobs that you can have in forensics and the courses that you will need to take in college to prepare for them.

Forensics is a science.

I guess I would ask what has made you consider forensics. The shows on TV offer a very inaccurate view of the job and the number of young people choosing forensics has expanded well beyond available jobs (at least in my area) as a result of TV. There are a number of other careers that include forensics such as forensic psychologists, forensic toxicologists, forensic sociologists, and others. It really depends on your interests. Preparing to be a crime scene technician usually involves becoming a cop first (again, depending upon your area).

If working in a lab is your thing, you might want to think about a variation of the theme that still helps in fighting crime—for example, a scientific view of arson is really a relatively new approach. There are many in prison for crimes they didn’t commit because the old arson investigators relied on what they had been taught by the investigators who came before and there was very little science involved. Arson science is really blossoming now (and you get to blow things up and catch them on fire).

You can always check with your local police jurisdiction and see if you can do a “ride along” with their forensics/crime scene team. I have done it several times and am now friends with one of the team members. Our lives connect because I train and work dogs for search and rescue. I get to see my fair share of crime scenes and am always happy that I am the one with the dog and not the tweezers!

I know that in my opinion forensics is NOT science.

Forensics is more like “creationism science”, in the sense that police come to the forensics people with a presupposed conclusion and ask them to find evidence to support that conclusion. Real science works the other way around, you look at the evidence without any assumption and then draw a conclusion.

@marinelife Thanks so much!
@Kayak8 Well, I am just really interested in the subject for some reason. I think I would be interested in being a Crime Scene Examiner. I would rather not work in a lab, as I am not to good with that type of thing. Next year I am going to start taking classes for college early, and I’m going to jobshadow a little bit. I am really going to find out if i’ll enjoy it or not. Thanks so much!

One thing I will say is that it’s very tedious or that’s how I found it to be.
I took a forensics science class and we would have simulated crime scenes with the combined elements of forensic science. The crime scene would include a body decaying and in order to calculate the time the person had been deceased we would use the method of examining the life cycles of maggots that were found on the body. In that same crime scene we would find and examine various bullet casings.

I thought this field would somewhat interest me (probably because of how it comes across through Hollywood), but I just grew tired of it all.
You stated that you will be doing job shawdowing, this is a great way to find out if you’ll like the field or not. Another way is probably through taking a class like I did.

I have a friend who’s majoring in the sciences, trying to reach the forensics field, if you choose to go this route in college, you will be taking a real heavy science course load. Another thing to note is that there’s an exam you’ll probably going to end up taking, don’t remember the name, I just remember those in the Forensics field have to end up taking this exam.