Case Study: A New Method for Investigating Crimes Against Children

Investigations of crimes against children are often complex, both in terms of the varied and large amount of digital technology encountered and the offensive nature of the crimes. Such cases are numerous, large, and prioritised, requiring digital forensics competence. Earlier digital forensics was considered and treated as a typical forensic science like fingerprint analysis, performed in a laboratory isolated from the investigative team. This decoupled way of working has proved to be both inefficient and error prone. At the Digital Forensic Unit of Oslo Police District we have developed a new way of working that addresses many of the problems created by the earlier lack of integration. This method stresses a much closer co-operation between the digital and criminal investigators. We document this method and share our experiences, hoping to spur more discussion of specific methods for dealing with particular types of cases with a large digital component.