“Mosaicking”: cross construction, sense-making and methods of police investigation

Purpose This article explores how homicide detectives make sense of and manipulate multiple physical, digital informational artefacts when assembling case narratives. The authors introduce the concept mosaicking to illuminate different modes information, deriving from investigative methods, are used in concert at key moments process – defining what type crime has occurred; incrimination elimination suspects; decisions charge suspects. Design/methodology/approach data qualitatively analysed include several hundred papers, interview transcripts ( n = 144) detailed ethnographic fieldnotes relating 44 investigations across four police services. These were collected during a four-year study use forensic sciences technologies (FSTs) British investigations. Findings Mosaicking describes investigators blend combine intelligence evidence generated via techniques “who did whom why?” Through processes convergent divergent mosaicking, able “lean” on kinds material reinforce or connect points intelligence. Originality/value findings fill gap knowledge about composite diverse sources information construction present more complex nuanced understanding epistemological interpretative work conducted by contemporary detectives, given array they increasingly have their disposal.