The role of the historian is to catalog and interpret events which have occurred in the past and to weave them into a meaningful narrative for people in the present. Typically we think of history as the broader story of a nation or of a people. But history is made up of minute interactions between individuals on an every-day scale. And it is these every-day interactions between people which forms the basis of police work.

As we are taught by countless television crime dramas like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, police try to solve criminal cases by looking for perpetrators who have the means, motive and opportunity to commit crime. What this means in a broader sense is that police investigators are a type of historian. They look at events in the past (crimes) and try to explain them in a meaningful way. We call the conclusions and meaning that they derive from their historical investigations “justice.” Justice is a genre of narrative or story-telling in which a person (or group) is victimized in a crime, and in which the person responsible is found and punished appropriately. If the plot points conform to this narrative within reasonable parameters, we say “Justice is served.” If not, then we worry about things like a “miscarriage of Justice.”

On most of these shows, the police go to great lengths and sometimes great personal risk to find out who and why a particular crime was committed. The intrepid investigators almost always prevail by solving the mystery and catching the bad guy. In the investigative process, we will see those concerned trying out many narratives to make sense of the situation and of the forensic evidence which they have collected. In one, the perpetrator will be the husband. In another twist, the bad guy will be a stalker ex-boyfriend. In a third interpretation of the same events, it might be revealed that the killing was completely random or accidental. But the common denominator in most of these shows is that one explanation is ultimately settled on. Whether or not it is indisputably proven or thrown out in court later, the police always end up knowing who the bad guy was and why he did it.

History in a broader sense is hardly ever as black and white as it is on television crime dramas like CSI. Crimes in real life aren’t always solved - or sometimes even properly investigated. And when no crime is committed, historians are often left with scant evidence to conduct their own investigations. They may have to rely on second, third and fourth hand accounts of events which happened hundreds or thousands of years before DNA identification, finger-print databases or blood-splatter analysis techniques were even invented. […]

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