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Critique Of Mcdevitt's Book Report

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Question Two: A critique of McDevitt’s Book
McDevitt’s book is a well-written and useful publication for learners, people with interest or managers in the administration of their respective investigative unit. Fundamentally, there is plenty of useful information in the book.
To begin with, the author highlights how efficacy can be increased amid the investigative officers and how resources can be used to make investigations better. These are very important points because they assist a lot of people in a number of ways. Chiefly, the management of resources is perhaps the single biggest hurdle in management of investigations. Generally, investigations require a lot of funds to proceed. On the same note, they involve travelling and a lot of field …show more content…

Understandingly, patrol officers are usually more involved in the security of the crime scene than in collecting evidence from it. More often than not, this is left within the ambit of the investigative officers. Therefore, the suggestion by the author that they should be featured in the investigations and even allowed to conclude the investigation in some cases not make any substantive sense. Actually, the author adduces several evidence and highlights on this issue. In fact, this point of view makes more sense for the patrolling officer who arrives at the scene of crime first to begin the investigations immediately compared to the investigating officer who may arrive later on. Obviously, delays in the start of investigations may result in the loss or destruction of some evidence such as scent. Having the patrol officers to participate in the investigations can; therefore, result in efficacy within the criminal investigations process. On the other hand, patrol officers are not sufficiently informed about investigative matters and this can prove to be faulty where the officer is allowed to proceed with the investigations without background knowledge on it. Viewed differently, having patrol officers as investigators may even culminate in inefficacy because their paucity in specialized knowledge may result in the stall of the …show more content…

Certainly, this perspective is important in a situation where the number of investigative officers is limited. However, this is not entirely true in most situations. In reality, the number of investigative officers is usually sufficient to handle the crimes that are reported. Concerning the issues of time, it would be prudent of the author to only suggest that the arrival time of the investigators should be prompt to facilitate faster collection of evidence but not that the patrol officers should take it upon themselves to begin the investigations. The author repeats this point in a number of sections. Seemingly, the author has a certain bias towards extending favorable treatment towards the patrol

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