Part I Fundamental requirements for an Investigations Unit 6. WHAT RESOURCES DO INVESTIGATORS NEED? Single-issue complaints generally require far fewer resources than investigations involving broader systemic issues. A complaint from a prisoner about a guard spitting in his food will need fewer resources than an allegation of large-scale systemic discrimination based on gender. However, regardless of the complexity and breadth of an investigation, investigators need two things to conduct an investigation that will withstand scrutiny: • sufficient time to carry out a thorough investigation • sufficient resources to gather evidence while it is still fresh. Time Investigations take time. Investigators need to be given sufficient time to do them thoroughly. If an investigator is overloaded with cases, the inevitable result is that few, if any, will be completed within a reasonable time. The investigation might be simple and straightforward. It might need only one investigator. However, it may not get done if that investigator is overburdened with a large number of similar cases. Resources Every investigator knows that the best evidence is collected close to the time of the alleged incident. Evidence can be perishable. It may be altered, lost or destroyed as time passes. Witness evidence and memories are less reliable with the passage of time. The solution is to assign enough investigators and resources to the investigation so that the evidence can be gathered and secured as soon as practical. In serious or evidence-intensive cases, consideration should be given to a technique called “frontend loading”. It is an approach used by many investigative agencies to conduct major investigations, mainly criminal investigations and homicide cases in particular. It involves deploying as many people as possible to an investigation from the very beginning. They are tasked to secure and process scenes, locate and interview witnesses and gather any other evidence before it disappears. The number of investigators assigned depends on the case itself. As discussed in Chapter 5, a key part of planning an investigation is estimating what and where the evidence is and then assigning enough resources to gather it in a reasonable time. In determining and allocating resources, relevant criteria include: • the amount of time since the events under investigation took place • the seriousness of the complaint or incident • the location and number of possible witnesses • the location of scene(s) • the location and quantity of physical, documentary and digital evidence. Front-end loading is sometimes known as “blitzing”, which accurately describes the approach: a fast, powerful response to capture evidence as quickly as possible, while it is still fresh. It is a technique that has been adapted very successfully for major investigations into systemic issues, as discussed in the case study in Chapter 29. Chapter 3: Adequate resources | 25