by Karen Moore

Created on: November 15, 2008   Last Updated: November 20, 2008

The crime drama shows that are on television today have sparked a higher interest in the career field of criminal justice. Everything from the law and courtroom fields to crime fighting and criminalistics in the lab are portrayed almost on a nightly basis. Some of these shows do a better job at relating reality than others, but crime is rarely wrapped up in an hour and often not as glamorous as shown.

Lawyers have to deal with more than one case at a time and often do not know the details of the case until they walk into the court room. Higher profile cases or capital offense cases will get more attention, but lawyers often rely on others to help them prepare for trial. The majority of cases will be pled out long before they get into the court room. Lawyers for both the public defenders side and the prosecution side have case loads that hinder them from doing more than shoving cases through the system. There may be a few individuals paid to do further investigations for the attorneys, but more often than not they have to deal with the case they are given.

Evidence processing is not as clean and tidy as shown on television either. For safety reasons high heels should not be worn when processing a scene. Clothes are often ruined so going from office to a crime scene and then out to dinner in the same outfit rarely will happen in real life. Processing a crime scene can be very time consuming. The smells associated with many scenes can linger for days. Some sights are never forgotten.

The extensive labs shown are quite expensive to run, as are certain tests. Often budgetary restraints will hinder a thorough and complete investigation. Many jurisdictions do not have complex labs available to them and crime scenes are often processed with the evidence being mailed to a lab that is overloaded with underpaid staff. The immediate results often garnered on television also rarely happen as there are few central data bases with the type of information they have at their fingertips when following a script. Revisiting a crime scene that has not been kept secure will not produce any court accepted evidence.

Overall, television has not done justice to the fact that every dead body is someone. Every crime scene has a victim and that ripples through so many areas of so many lives. Ask anyone working in the field of criminal justice and they can tell you it really is nothing like what television portrays but so much more.

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