Professor Francesco Sidoti describes the specialty of the course, the commitment, the special meaning of the word “investigation” and our credits according to public opinion and professionals.

1. Our specialty

 Our interest in investigation is not a result of post-September 11th terrorism culture.

      In 1998 I decided to organise a refresher course of specialised studies in security and criminology at the University of L’Aquila. Our course originated in a Faculty of Education and our approach is characterised by that specificity: from a humanistic point of view, we wanted to explain to people what security is and what criminology can do for them.

     Criminology could give important advice for decisions and strategies concerning the defence of properties, interests, information. The teaching of applied criminology has obviously a great importance for police forces, private investigators and security operators. But, from this point of view, we supposed we were easily defeated by the programs offered by schools already existing within the professional public agencies which have the duty of training their operators in this field. So we decided to offer only an approach to a specific sector: investigation, from a humanistic and methodological point of view, absent even in the best law enforcement schools.

      In August 2000 we started the project of a 3- year- academic course on
investigation which is the first in Italy and probably in the world. Practitioners, professionals, amateurs, public servants, and students were concerned. A lot of our students are already working in the public area and  they are interested in our specific approach.

     For young students the private sector is important. Many private investigators enter the field after serving law enforcement or the military. Those individuals can apply their prior work experience in a private investigative specialty. In Italy (as everywhere in the world) nobody enter the field soon afterwards graduation from college.

     In the future, employment of private detectives and investigators is expected to grow faster than the average in all occupations. In addition to growth, replacement of those who retire or leave the occupation for other reasons should create many additional job openings. Increased demand for private detectives and investigators will result from fear of crime, increased controversies and the need to protect confidential information and property of all kinds. More private investigators will also be needed to assist attorneys working on criminal defence and civil controversies. The growth of worldwide financial activity will increase the demand for investigators in order to control internal and external financial losses, to monitor competitors and to prevent industrial spying.

     After September 11, all of us exactly know that the West is not invulnerable and its people secure within their own borders. Our course was designed for those who are interested in security matters from many points of view, even belonging to different fields and holding different positions: public and private. For this reason the courses offer general information on different issues. In the end the qualification will be appreciated by many private and public organizations.

   Some of our students are young people interested in a first survey of criminology, and some are experienced public operators who are interested in an academic treatment of problems found in daily activities.

     The teachers of our courses are highly qualified university professors and specialists who operate in fields such as criminology, study of the victims, psychology, sociology, anthropology, neurophysiology, computer science, law and medicine. We invited to speak in our lessons bodyguards, tax officers, secret service officers, Zen Abbots, policemen, public prosecutors and judges. Our issues range from fear to risk analysis, self-control, self-knowledge, paranoia, crime scene investigation, computer crimes, security industry, juridical framework, Mafia, organized crime, disorganized crime, environmental crimes, mobbing, tampering and serial killers. 

2. Commitment

      The degree course in Investigation Sciences intends to form graduates capable of managing modern investigation strategies, security control in the prevention and repression of criminality in order to contribute to safeguard democratic institutions. The professional figure that will be structured by the degree course in Investigation Sciences will have the competence and the knowledge necessary to individuate cognitive, relational and behavioural problems as it builds a preparation of a strictly technical-investigative type on the basis of preliminary and irreplaceable knowledge of the behaviour organization.

     The proposed course structure intends to give a scientific-applicative formation as well as a solid operative- methodological knowledge. In particular the graduate in Investigation Sciences will acquire the basic knowledge characterising the different sectors of the psychological sciences and will posses a good knowledge of research methods relative to the measuring and treatment of data. The aspects that characterize the professional figure regard the study of cognitive processes, neurobiological and neuro- physiological substrata of superior nervous activity as well as the clinical method. To this specific formation we add various other competences: criminological, sociological, ethno- anthropological, historical, economical, juridical and institutional. In our idea investigation and intelligence are strictly interrelated: intelligence is relevant before (ex ante) and investigation after (ex post).

    The graduate of this course will have professional activity such as expert in methods and techniques as well as operator in defined roles in public and private administration. The course contributes to create those professional figures that are indispensable in the light of the legislation on trial procedure, conforming also the universities to what normally happens in the most prestigious police academies (like the F.B.I.) where Investigation Sciences are in particular connected to the behavioural sciences. Compared to police academies the best that we offer is a huge humanistic, psychological, methodological preparation and a global perspective founded on co-operation. Above all, our students will be rational believers in democratic principles and they will understand the meaning of a profession based on the desire to safeguard human lives.

      Needing to adapt the University structures to an increasingly pressing demand for formation from the Italian society and to conform to international experiences, the psychological field seemed the right choice to give both a basic preparation and a specific preparation for many investigation techniques. Good interviewing and interrogation skills are important and are usually acquired in earlier careers in law enforcement or other different fields concerning security. The investigator must be able to present his facts as “evidence”, so that a jury believes in it. The interviewing and interrogation skills are important also apart from trials. If one takes into consideration, for example, the problems related to the decode of the justice collaborators’ confessions, the figure of the infiltrated agent or the controversies generated by the problematical interpretation of judicial declarations given by minors in cases of sexual violence, it is evident that a traditional preparation of strictly juridical or technical type would be insufficient, whereas an adequate preparation in the basics of psychological science and techniques would be preferable.

     Through the wide spectrum of planned formative studies, seminars, practice in public and private structures, and a particularly difficult final exam, during the   three- year course the vocation of the graduate can reveal itself in many possible applicative fields (forensic medicine, criminal information technology etc.). Thanks to the collaboration with the Faculties of Medicine, Science, Engineering, Economy, the University of L’Aquila can offer the graduate a formation which makes possible to choose a course structure in which the scientific component is significant (toxicology, pharmacology, ballistics, interception etc.), but not an end in itself. Our students must really believe in their professional calling. The course is articulated in three years with a first  year widely informative on many investigative themes; in the second year applicative and operative themes become more relevant (through various formative activities within specific agencies); and in the third year particular significance is given to the final exam, which becomes not only the conclusive moment of the studies, but also the immediate connection with the successive professional engagement of the investigators in public and private organizations, law courts, police forces and surveillance and prevention services. From the point of view of the involved officers’ number, the security sector is, both in Italy and in the rest of the world, in rapid development. We firmly believe in international co-operation: one of our most important goals is to constitute a network of academic institutions interested in investigation and intelligence matters.
 

3. On investigation

     Investigation is a search for the truth. Under totalitarian systems there is not investigation, but a despotic way of looking for the truth (such as inquisition, Stalinist trials, fundamentalist fatwa, and so on). In a democratic society the meaning of investigation is specific: the connection between investigation and open society. When I speak about investigation I speak about criminal investigation, but also about investigative journalism, congressional investigation, private investigation, information gathering, and so on.

     Not all of us are happy about the situation in democratic security structures. A famous aphorism says: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”. But this saying overlooks the fact that governments vary in times as well as in forms and contents. Since democracy is increasingly the most common system of government (from India to Turkey, from Venezuela to Pakistan, from Poland to Serbia), there is little motivation for dwelling on the truism which is “better than communism”. A good democracy is based on checks and balances, such as investigation procedures, from trials to congressional hearings, from free journalism to divided governments. Investigation originates from the essential human desire for impartiality and justice, honours evidence and the role of law. Investigation is based on the idea of an open society. Investigation means serious explorations into political corruption (crimes range from the illegal financing of parties to the violation of state regulations). Moreover investigation means: control on the people who have important powers, for instance, a control on the media, for the media, by the media (in these highly partisan times, the media, with all their oddities and strengths, continue to lose credibility among the public).
 

4. Criminology, criminalistics, investigation and criminal investigation

Since the 19th Century when fingerprints were discovered the criminal investigation has been progressing. Today, for example, the DNA analysis gives a new kind of print through which it is possible to identify culprits with an incredible accuracy. Thanks to the great worldwide success of these topics, the crime scene investigation became famous (the "CSI syndrome"). According to the mass media, law investigations and crimes are faced with more and more sophisticated investigation methodologies. Criminalistics, forensic sciences and the various natural sciences, (which are different and separated from the human ones) deal with evidences and tracks founded on the crime scene, are very famous today: forensic genetics, ballistics, toxicology, forensic medicine and electronic microscopy. These branches of learning are more and more relevant in trials; they are often essential in order to capture a killer or to free an innocent (referring to distant and defined trials as well).

      Because of a great mass media success, criminology is often confused with forensic or criminalistics or with investigation or with criminal investigation, even if they are only neighbouring sectors. Investigation is conceptually a separate sector from criminalistics as well as criminalistics should be clearly separated from criminal investigation: criminalistics and forensic science ("forensic" is simply an adjective that can be put in front of any science applied to legal matters; criminalistics is a branch of forensic science) answer the questions about “how”, “when”, and “where” a crime was committed, and criminal investigation answers the question about “who” committed a crime. The causes of crime is the heart of criminology; its problem is “why?”. Criminology tries to answer the questions about “why” a crime was committed, but many others disciplines boast the same purpose. For instance, forensic psychiatry, investigative psychology, offender profiling.

     Significant issues in criminology are the role of age, race, gender, class, and politics in law-breaking causation, as well as explanations of specific forms such as violence, deviance, and white collar crime. Criminology is not about solving individual crimes. That is the domain of criminal investigation.

      Investigation is a wider sector than the criminal investigation one: in fact next to criminal investigations there are journalistic investigations, investigations into problems that haven’t got a criminal importance and so on. Democratic system, open society, cheeks and balances are central topics of the idea of investigation.

5. The importance of a methodological aspect

      The history of judicial errors is tragic and controversial in many countries: in the U.S.A. for what concerned death penalties and in Italy and in France for many other aspects which arose a lot of disputes over this topic. On an international level, commenting on facts such as the incapacity for foreseeing the attacks on the Twin Towers in September 11^th or the incapacity for foreseeing the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, the history of intelligence and investigation was described as a litany of failure or a march of folly. This point of view is too much pessimistic but it is true that together with the coming of a global society (rich in opportunities as well as in new risks and in new problems) a methodological aspect is more and more important both in investigation and in intelligence. In a “global village” every research worker deals with a large quantity of information, indiscretions, rumours, conjectures, half truths, likelihoods, probabilities and possibilities. Referring to a long tradition of thought (from Socrates to Popper) I said: «Investigation is made by a naturally ignorant person who is fallible, often partisan and superstitious, always dominated by a surplus of perception in a historical context characterized by an incredible glut of stimuli, information and crimes. The English words “detective” and “detection” derive from the Latin “detegere” that is to say “to discover”, “to uncover”. But above all today the most frequent and the most dangerous risk is that of making mistakes especially in investigations. In sciences as well as in investigations and in trials the method should be at first turned to find mistakes before the truth» ("Investigazione e Criminologia, Giuffrè, Milano 2006, p. 203). The famous sentence “give me the evidence” is important to each investigator, who first of all has to be worried about the possibility that he can make mistakes. So each investigator has always to think of how he can back his hypotheses with facts that are adequately gathered and produced.

6. Great investigators

    Rudolph Giuliani is a great investigator. Eliot Spitzer, the "Sheriff of Wall Street", is a great investigator. The housecleaning at The New York Times after the Jayson Blair scandal was a great investigation. The people, who even today are looking for Nazi criminals and for the financial laundering of the Third Reich treasures, are great investigators. The investigation of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (the AIPAC), made by the FBI, is a great investigation. The investigation of the Elf, on Mr. Chirac and his RPR party, made by Eva Joly and Eric Halphen, is a great investigation. The enquiry on the Pan Am 103 bombing is a great investigation. The investigation of Robert Hanssen is a great investigation. The investigation of Aldrich Ames is a great investigation. From dangerous priests to reference-related defamation suits there were great democratic investigations and great investigators both in America and in Europe. But there were great investigators (such as Giovanni Falcone) and great investigations (such as “Pizza connection”) in Italy too.

    Italy was the birthplace of masters in modern criminological thought from Beccaria to Lombroso. In Italy there is a great modern culture about investigative matters (such as the Mafia, terrorism, corruption etc.) and even in technical field (such as wire-tapping or the handling of justice’s collaborators).

7. Credits

    After the “CSI effect”, the American universities have seen an increase of students enrolling in criminology and forensic sciences. There was a criticism made by police experts. According to them, American universities offered  inappropriate courses and expensive masters in order to increase tuitions and profits, leaving students confused, at least unprepared for real-world investigative work. Is there the same problem in Italy?

a) In an article published in October 26, 2001, (Supplemento Lavoro), G. Tesorio and I. Trovato chose 5 out of 1142 degree courses offered by Italian universities for being particularly noteworthy. Considering that these two gentlemen are acknowledged experts in the sector, the fact that they included Investigation Sciences in the 5 makes us very proud. They drew a conclusion that strongly underlines the innovative aspects of our program: “ ….this course, just inaugurated and unique in Italy, is the most avant-garde course on an international level”. The Corriere della Sera is the most prestigious Italian newspaper.

b) In 2004 (and in 2007) we made a formal and detailed agreement with the Italian National Police, signed in the exceptional presence of its Head, the prefect Gianni de Gennaro. This agreement is an exclusive official recognition among the many agreements of the Italian National Police with other universities and public institutions. The program of our course in L'Aquila was applied to the course for detectives made by the Italian National Police in itself as well.