Basic principles – control

This is a brief video that deals with the first of the 5 principles – Control.

None of the five is less important than any of the others but we have chosen Control as the first for the simple reason that Control, in the sense of control of access to the incident scene, is indeed the starting point and a poorly controlled scene can – indeed most likely will – be compromised beyond saving.

A number of examples are given in the video, and you certainly should read the Guardian article below (it’s in the ‘see also’ section at the bottom of this page) to take part in the discussion on step 1.19.

Note too that this is the first place that we have mentioned the importance of the legal system in the jurisdiction where the incident took place. Ultimately inadmissible evidence is as useless as evidence compromised by contamination resulting from poor control.