Analysis of the procedures used to evaluate suicide crime scenes in Brazil: A statistical approach to interpret reports

• We evaluated reports on suicide scenes.
• We used both qualitative and quantitative approaches based on statistics and multivariate methods.
• An empirical function was introduced in order to be able to measure the overall quality of suicide reports.
• Both approaches showed that the reports do not follow any standardized methodology.
• This study has the potential to be applied in different forensic investigations.

This study uses statistical techniques to evaluate reports on suicide scenes; it utilizes 80 reports from different locations in Brazil, randomly collected from both federal and state jurisdictions. We aimed to assess a heterogeneous group of cases in order to obtain an overall perspective of the problem. We evaluated variables regarding the characteristics of the crime scene, such as the detected traces (blood, instruments and clothes) that were found and we addressed the methodology employed by the experts. A qualitative approach using basic statistics revealed a wide distribution as to how the issue was addressed in the documents. We examined a quantitative approach involving an empirical equation and we used multivariate procedures to validate the quantitative methodology proposed for this empirical equation. The methodology successfully identified the main differences in the information presented in the reports, showing that there is no standardized method of analyzing evidences.