Study of Deceased People in Amiens Over One Year of National Police Investigations

Abstract

The discovery of a dead body, depending on the circumstances surrounding the deceased, requires the intervention
of both the police and forensic officers. The principal objective of this research is to study the ways the police
and/or forensic officers operate and deal with the discovery of a body. We were notably interested to know in which
proportions the police intervened on the discovery of body; the motives to appeal to the forensic officer and the
circumstances leading to a postmortem examination.
By using data retrieved from the Amiens Police Station archives and medical records (the number of autopsies
carried out and the number of bodies examined) at the Social and Forensics’ services at the University of Amiens
hospital center, we accomplished a retrospective study of deaths in the city of Amiens in 2006, for which the police
intervened.
In France, death investigation does not only involve intervention of the police. Therefore, cases from the
surroundings of Amiens were excluded from the study