How where the Guidelines Developed?

As first responders, we function in guideline-driven professions. Whether it be protocols, standard operating procedures, or standard operating guidelines, we refer to these important documents to guide our day-to-day practices.

As the AICSI founding members began to develop the idea of a program to teach Postmortem Interval and maintaining evidence on crimes scenes and those scenes that involve an unattended death, it became clear that no comprehensive set of guidelines were available for First Responders to refer to when dealing with many of these common emergency response scenes.

With a goal of developing a comprehensive set of guidelines, the American Institute of Crime Scene Integrity was formed and an advisory committee was established to create a comprehensive set of guidelines for first responding organizations and their members, giving them the tools they need to preserve evidence at these often difficult scenes.

As the process of developing these guidelines continued, the subject matter contained in the guidelines grew far beyond just the information needed to maintain the integrity of evidence on a scene. A review of the Table of Contents will illustrate the comprehensive nature of the guidelines and the subject matter they cover.

Why Are the Guidelines Important to the Learner?

Preserving Evidence Integrity at Crime and Death Scenes is a comprehensive learning program offered by the American Institute of Crime Scene Integrity. In addition to five (5) learning modules on Postmortem Interval that provide a foundation for the rest of the course, this program includes 33 education modules that each covers one of the guidelines.

In each of the 33 guideline modules, the learner will begin by reviewing the guideline for that module, thus providing a foundation for what will be learned in the module. The video in the learning module will then teach them the guideline in detail.