Events

Today Alexander Bastrykin, the Chairman of the Investigative Committee of Russia, continued teaching an elective course for law students of Saint Petersburg State University.

The Head of the Committee told the audience about a forensics institute in Investigative Committee structure, about creation of Forensics Centre in the Investigative Committee of Russia, and about goals forensic investigators have to tackle.

"Forensic activities of the Investigative Committee have long traditions. Positions of criminal procurators had been introduced in regional and republican prosecutors offices in 1954. Decades have passed, position name and organizational affiliation have changed but the substance remained the same. Goals of forensic investigators remain constant - to put into practise scientific and technological means and scientifically based recommendations aimed at detection of grave and especially grave offences" - Alexander Bastrykin noted.

Forensic specialists helped solve thousands of crimes, made hundreds of trips to flash points in the country. They have been engaged in investigating of all probes related to serial killings, banditism, terrorism, airplane crashes and other high-profile cases.

Alexander Bastrykin told the students about operating activity of the Forensic Centre of the Investigative Committee of Russia responsible for timely arrival to crime scenes for providing practical and methodological assistance in preliminary investigative activities; improvement of the current and  and development of new methods of investigation of certain types of crimes and tactics of certain investigative procedures; forming and maintaining of databases for forensics and expert accounting, forensics information, etc.

He lecturer clarified that the "Concept of development of forensics activities of the Investigative Committee of Russia covering 2018-2025 is exclusively practice-oriented and determines basic principles, goals and staged of development of all forensics units in the structure of the Investigative Committee. Moreover, the Concept reflects a mechanism of implementation of professional standard "Forensics investigator" approved in 2015, issues of psychological and expert support of preliminary investigation, improved utilization of advance high-technology equipment available to the investigation units of the Investigative Committee.

Michail Shuvalov, inspector of the Main Forensics Directorate, took part in the class along with Alexander Bastrykin. In his lecture "Examination of the crime scene" he focused attention of the students on the fact that this investigative activity provides an investigator with the first and basic information on a type of the crime, possible identity of a perpetrator and modus operandi. "Competent examination of the crime scene is a key stone of the whole investigation" - he added. The Main Forensics Directorate officer listed scene examination techniques, groups of traces that can be discovered at a crime scene and outlined certain examples of registering discovered traces. A separate part of the lecture was devoted to detection of biological traces. The students found out that genome of each person is as unique as fingerprints. The lecturer also highlighted aspects of scent traces detection and use of olfactory abilities of specially trained "bio detector" dogs.

The second Forensic Centre representative - Konstantin Suprunov, the senior forensic investigator, told the students about advanced forensics equipment used by the Investigative Committee. "Currently in most cases forensic investigators still use fingerprinting powders, brushes and film for fingerprinting. However, science is not static" - the lecturer noted. The forensic investigator gave real practical examples to cover substances and instruments used for trace exemption, told the students about special chemical tests and devices used in forensics practice to detect and study biological traces and demonstrated several examples of forensic equipment that helps investigators in their work at a crime scene

The class ended with a lively interaction between the Investigative Committee representatives and the students, during which the students received answers to all questions they had.