Rating: 
Summary: A Great Introduction to Forensic Science!
Review: As textbooks go this is without a doubt the best one that I have ever used. This book manages to explain complicated things such as DNA, and other techniques, and tests that are used during the course of an investigation in simple terms that are easy to understand. Especially if you are new to the idea of Forensic Science. Simple explanations, with colored pictures, diagrams, and case studies help show how different tests, evidence collection, and other aspects of Forensic's are used to help "catch" the bad guy. Again easy to read and understand. Well worth the purchase, you will learn a lot!
Rating:
Summary: A Great Introduction to Forensic Science!
Review: As textbooks go this is without a doubt the best one that I have ever used. This book manages to explain complicated things such as DNA, and other techniques, and tests that are used during the course of an investigation in simple terms that are easy to understand. Especially if you are new to the idea of Forensic Science. Simple explanations, with colored pictures, diagrams, and case studies help show how different tests, evidence collection, and other aspects of Forensic's are used to help "catch" the bad guy. Again easy to read and understand. Well worth the purchase, you will learn a lot!
Rating: 
Summary: For School
Review: I had to use this book for school - I liked it. It provided me with the basic information that i needed to know in this field.
Rating:
Summary: An Orwellian apparatus we can live with?
Review: On the surface, Saferstein's textbook is meant to survey the procedures and instrumentation which oversee the evidential chain-of-possession from crime scene to laboratory to courtroom presentation. It offers a brief archaeology of the field, the technologies of social control developing alongside the modern metropolis (that eternal hotbed of anonymous hatred and victimization), from anthropometry and dactylography all the way down to the Human Genome Project. "Forensics," derived from the Greek FORENSIS, or "debate," registers the cooperative interplay between scientific reason and the criminal justice system. Saferstein's text begins, logically enough, at the crime scene itself, and after a brief excursion on basic chemistry, biology, geology and physics, goes on to catalogue the vicissitudes of evidence-collection and processing, the laboratory procedures for organic and inorganic analysis, the various forms of microscopy available and their uses, the typing and collection of hair, fiber, fingerprints, body fluids, et al., the physiology of drug and alcohol consumption (and its legal implications), with detailed excurses on forensic serology and toxicology, firearms and ballistics, document and voice examination, the Internet, all supplemented by legalistic paradigms of prosecution, evidential value, case studies, and a fine insight into the way lawyers manipulate criminalistic legislation to their own parsimonious gain (i.e. memories of O. J. Simpson's blood).The implications for altruistic social control are staggering. Once identitarian criminal databases (blood, fiber, DNA, fingerprint, somatotype, facial and retinal recognition, credit records, the resurrection of deleted email off the original magnetic tapes(!), et al.) are centralized and updated, it would seem that a citizen wouldn't be able to stick his gum on a public wall without the whole juggernaut of networked forensic technologies converging on the site, a public littering ticket arriving in one's mailbox that very afternoon. One could envision a subculture of decadent anti-criminologists, using Saferstein's text as a blueprint for new Underworld patents on gloves, bodywear, chemical reagents, and a whole bookshelf of counter-procedural "operations manuals" which serve to elude and obfuscate the forensic apparatus. In the teeth of such ambitious criminality, I suppose the only hope forensic science has of becoming the legalistic Archangel of altruistic Orwellianism it wants to be is if the criminal element remains, on the whole, as stupid as ever. As for the *true* decadents, the white-collar devils of capitalist exploitation, we can only shudder at the destruction their money can wreak. In the future of crime, those who have the most brilliant scientists and engineers on their payroll will be the ones who can stay strategically ahead of the system. Why, one can almost imagine organized crime syndicates recruiting disgruntled grad students right out of MIT! But going back to the text itself, there are some annoying glitches the potential buyer should be aware of.... My criminalistics professor at Rutgers, a friend and colleague of the author, pointed out to me that Saferstein retired from the forensics field in 1991, going on to freelance his expertise to any privatized legal cabal willing to stamp a check. As a result (isolated from the laboratory as he is), some of the instrumental minutiae which characterize a cutting-edge forensics lab are absent from or misrepresented in the text. Furthermore, on the flip side, certain defunct procedures and instruments are presented as if they were still cutting-edge! Much of the photography and graphic presentations in the book also seem a tad antiquated, carry-overs from previous editions, apparently. (My own father, a specialist in immunoassay engineering, upon perusing the book's graphics estimated its copyright at late `80s, early `90s!) But these are minor trifles in an outstanding introductory text. The best thing about this book is that the price has dropped about twenty dollars since the previous edition. Wonderful news for penny-stricken undergraduates like ourselves!
Rating:
Summary: An Orwellian apparatus we can live with?
Review: On the surface, Saferstein's textbook is meant to survey the procedures and instrumentation which oversee the evidential chain-of-possession from crime scene to laboratory to courtroom presentation. It offers a brief archaeology of the field, the technologies of social control developing alongside the modern metropolis (that eternal hotbed of anonymous hatred and victimization), from anthropometry and dactylography all the way down to the Human Genome Project. "Forensics," derived from the Greek FORENSIS, or "debate," registers the cooperative interplay between scientific reason and the criminal justice system. Saferstein's text begins, logically enough, at the crime scene itself, and after a brief excursion on basic chemistry, biology, geology and physics, goes on to catalogue the vicissitudes of evidence-collection and processing, the laboratory procedures for organic and inorganic analysis, the various forms of microscopy available and their uses, the typing and collection of hair, fiber, fingerprints, body fluids, et al., the physiology of drug and alcohol consumption (and its legal implications), with detailed excurses on forensic serology and toxicology, firearms and ballistics, document and voice examination, the Internet, all supplemented by legalistic paradigms of prosecution, evidential value, case studies, and a fine insight into the way lawyers manipulate criminalistic legislation to their own parsimonious gain (i.e. memories of O. J. Simpson's blood). The implications for altruistic social control are staggering. Once identitarian criminal databases (blood, fiber, DNA, fingerprint, somatotype, facial and retinal recognition, credit records, the resurrection of deleted email off the original magnetic tapes(!), et al.) are centralized and updated, it would seem that a citizen wouldn't be able to stick his gum on a public wall without the whole juggernaut of networked forensic technologies converging on the site, a public littering ticket arriving in one's mailbox that very afternoon. One could envision a subculture of decadent anti-criminologists, using Saferstein's text as a blueprint for new Underworld patents on gloves, bodywear, chemical reagents, and a whole bookshelf of counter-procedural "operations manuals" which serve to elude and obfuscate the forensic apparatus. In the teeth of such ambitious criminality, I suppose the only hope forensic science has of becoming the legalistic Archangel of altruistic Orwellianism it wants to be is if the criminal element remains, on the whole, as stupid as ever. As for the *true* decadents, the white-collar devils of capitalist exploitation, we can only shudder at the destruction their money can wreak. In the future of crime, those who have the most brilliant scientists and engineers on their payroll will be the ones who can stay strategically ahead of the system. Why, one can almost imagine organized crime syndicates recruiting disgruntled grad students right out of MIT! But going back to the text itself, there are some annoying glitches the potential buyer should be aware of.... My criminalistics professor at Rutgers, a friend and colleague of the author, pointed out to me that Saferstein retired from the forensics field in 1991, going on to freelance his expertise to any privatized legal cabal willing to stamp a check. As a result (isolated from the laboratory as he is), some of the instrumental minutiae which characterize a cutting-edge forensics lab are absent from or misrepresented in the text. Furthermore, on the flip side, certain defunct procedures and instruments are presented as if they were still cutting-edge! Much of the photography and graphic presentations in the book also seem a tad antiquated, carry-overs from previous editions, apparently. (My own father, a specialist in immunoassay engineering, upon perusing the book's graphics estimated its copyright at late '80s, early '90s!) But these are minor trifles in an outstanding introductory text. The best thing about this book is that the price has dropped about twenty dollars since the previous edition. Wonderful news for penny-stricken undergraduates like ourselves!
Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: Outstanding reading. Definatley without a doubt the best forensic book out there.
Rating:
Summary: No Forensic Scientist Should Be Without A Copy!
Review: This book provides an enormous amount of information that is useful for both the experienced forensic scientist and the student who is just starting in the field.
Rating:
Summary: Geat Reading and Information
Review: This book was a required text for a Criminalistic course during my undergraduate studies in Criminal Justice. Now that I am working within the Criminal Justice field - I find myself using this book as a refrence, and loaning to other people within the field. This book is written in an professional manner and clearly explains various forensic tests that are conducted upon evidence. I loaned this book to a 11 year old child - who was intrested in this area and he had no problem underdstanding the basic facts and information presented. Saferstein is an excellent author who has an uncanny abilty to write technical material in a clear and concise manner. I recommend this book to students, professors, and practitioners in the criminal justice field.
Rating:
Summary: Criminalistics: An Introduction to Forensic Science
Review: This is without any doubt, in my opinion, the best book ever
written on criminalistics. Not there are not any other great books on the subject, however this is the greatest. It is suprisingly comprehendible considering the complexity of some of the topics involved. The photographs and drawings are crystal clear.
In addition I especially like the test at the end of each section that I feel is necessary to help the reader realize his knowledge,(or lack of knowledge) of that section.
Rating:
Summary: Criminalistics: An Introduction to Forensic Science
Review: This is without any doubt, in my opinion, the best book ever
written on criminalistics. Not there are not any other great books on the subject, however this is the greatest. It is suprisingly comprehendible considering the complexity of some of the topics involved. The photographs and drawings are crystal clear.
In addition I especially like the test at the end of each section that I feel is necessary to help the reader realize his knowledge,(or lack of knowledge) of that section.
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