The University of Northern Iowa is debuting what it’s calling the Crime Scene House for use by criminology students on the Cedar Falls campus.
It’s one thing to watch actors on TV portray investigators gathering evidence, but it’s something else entirely to be emersed in a house filled with simulated blood and realistic dummies.
Scott Peters, director of UNI’s School of Public Affairs and Service, says the recently-completed house gives students the opportunity to learn in environments that mirror the complexity of real investigations.
“There’s three staged crime scenes in it,” Peters says. “This is an opportunity at the culmination of a class, say a class on homicide that focuses on how investigations work, for students to actually go and walk through a crime scene and get a sense of what law enforcement professionals have to do in those kinds of crime scenes.”
Peters says the Crime Scene House will help students to build the analytical, ethical and collaborative skills required in today’s justice and public service professions.
“We have a class on criminalistics where students learn about how to gather evidence and handle evidence and things like analyzing fingerprints and things like that,” Peters says. “So now rather than do that in a classroom, they’ll be able to do that in a more realistic environment, a simulated environment.”
UNI is hosting a public conference on Friday to celebrate the launch of the School of Public Affairs and Service, and one of the highlights will be tours of the Crime Scene House.
“Long-term, one of the things we’re looking to do in there is do a sort of simulated interrogation space,” Peters says, “so that in classes where students learn a bit about interrogation techniques, they can practice some of those in a more realistic setting to help students apply the things they’re learning in the classroom.”
Learn more about Friday’s conference and tours of the house HERE.