While all forensic technician jobs tend to revolve around determining the truth behind an alleged criminal event, the jobs that those technicians perform can be highly specialized and vary greatly. Despite the fact that forensic technician jobs can be classified in a variety of ways, they mostly deal with chemistry, biology, fingerprints, or computers. If necessary, technicians may be cross-trained to perform multiple tasks. Those who excel in one of these areas may do exceptionally well in this field. The key is to pay close attention to the finer points.
Those with a chemistry background or who have studied chemistry have a better chance of landing a job as a forensic technician. These people may examine materials for the presence of substances like blood or bodily fluids. It’s critical to understand how those fluids react to certain chemicals and how that might contaminate or destroy evidence. For example, forensic technicians may need to determine the fabric type of a piece of clothing and select a testing chemical that will not harm the fabric or affect the test results.
Jobs as a forensic technician may also require a lot of biology. The technician may be in charge of not only identifying bodily fluids, tissues, and other important identifiers, but also determining who they belong to. If either the suspect or the victim’s identities are in doubt, this can assist in identifying them.
Some forensic technicians may specialize in fingerprints in addition to these jobs. In such cases, a technician may obtain a set of fingerprints directly from a suspect or from a crime scene and attempt to match them. Even though most of the matching is now done by computer, it requires knowledge of the ridges that make up fingerprints, as well as a great deal of attention to detail. Technicians in these positions may work for a local, state, or national law enforcement agency.
Computers are a relatively new class of forensic technician jobs. Computers can hold a wealth of information that could be crucial to an investigation, whether it’s financial crimes or a variety of other potential crimes. A computer forensic technician may be able to recover at least some of the evidence if a suspect tries to destroy it. Computer technicians could spend hours trying to restore and recover data that would otherwise be lost in such situations.