Causality and Randomness as Objects of Perception in the Structure of Criminalistic Thinking

Abstract

The author analyzes criminalistic mindset from two standpoints — as a set of guidelines and as a flexible system of tools for studying the crime incident — and notes that the process of investigating and solving crimes is represented in the cognition of the person studying it as a dynamic system developing from cause to effect. Thus, there is a transition from the a priori (fragmented) probability of evidential information to the a posteriori, reliable probability. The author stresses the importance of the analysis and synthesis mechanism of the investigator’s thinking, which allow them to avoid investigation mistakes or other distortions of information perception. Each consequence has a corresponding concrete cause, although one cause could lead to multiple consequences. Thus, the causality of a crime and the appearance of its traces are perceived in detail, i.e., the investigator studies the mechanism of how the crime was committed through the trace picture of crime consequences and chooses the most probable of all possible causes. The author points out the importance of verifying the obtained information because material information is subject to destructive physical and chemical processes, while the ideal information — to cognitive distortions of perception, memory and reproduction. However, even when the trace information is distorted, the cause-and-effect relations remain intact. The author stresses the significance of the version process in the establishment of the cause-and-effect relations. He also discusses the random factors present in the process of crime investigation and solution, which, on the one hand, have a negative impact on this process and, on the other, make it possible to resolve problem situations characterized by a lack of information. Randomness is most evident in the investigative situations of problematic or risky nature. It is noted that randomness acts as a strictly subjective feature dependent on the specifics of the criminalistic mindset of the subject of cognition, not on the features of the objective reality; the characteristics of randomness could differ at different levels of examining a problem. The author analyzes the structure of the consequences of random search as a decision-making method in the conditions of insufficient information: it is possible to continue random search, to update the version or to transform the investigative situation from the simple into the complex or vice versa.