St Joseph's Nudgee College

March 24, 2011

Year 6 St Joseph’s Nudgee College students heard from a Forensic Scientist and got to play crime scene investigators recently as part of their Science studies.

The forensics unit is designed to teach students essential, appropriate and regular methods that forensic investigators use during their examination of a scene and subsequent testing of gathered evidence. These include fingerprinting, hair samples, hand-writing analysis, footprint analysis and offender profiling.

“We don't get too technical or gory as we mainly concentrate on logical reasoning and building up a story/picture,” said Year 6 teacher Mr John Richardson.

“Our main end of term assessment item includes collecting evidence from a crime scene (a staged burglary in which $500 has been taken), building a profile and making a logical judgement,” he said.

The students gained first hand tips to assist with their assessment from Forensic Scientist, Inspector Darren Pobar. Inspector Pobar is the Regional Forensic Coordinator for Metropolitan South Region in the Queensland Police Service.

“Forensics is using science to solve crimes. As a Forensic Scientist I have dealt with a range of crime scenes from break and enter through to murder,” he said.

“My current role as the Regional Forensic Coordinator means I attend major crime scenes and coordinate lots of experts, such as blood splatter and finger print analysts, who come together as a team to try and solve the crime.”

Inspector Pobar told the students there are three main ways Forensic Scientists try to work out who did it.

“The first is problem solving. This involves looking, collecting and analyzing the evidence,” he said.

“The second is making connections. By linking clues we can determine if one scene is connected to another and also if there is a possible suspect.

“Once we’ve done the first two things we build a story so it reads like a book. This story then gets taken to court and hopefully results in an offender being proven guilty.”

As part of his presentation, Inspector Pobar created a mock crime scene in which a Science test had been taken from Mr Richardson. He also demonstrated what a crime scene examiner wears at a scene and showed the students examples of foot and finger print impressions.

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