Fecha de recepción: 15/07/2010 Fecha de aceptación: 01/08/2010 AFTERMATH, INC.: CLEANING UP AFTER CSI GOES HOME SECUELAS, INC.: LIMPIEZA HASTA DESPUÉS QUE CSI REGRESA A CASA Dr. Edward J. Schauer College of Juvenile Justice ejschauer@pvamu.edu Estados Unidos de América By Gil Reavill (New York: Gotham books, 2007. pp. 284) The book, Aftermath, INC.: Cleaning Up after CSI goes Home, defines and explains the issue of serious crime scene contamination. It also expands upon crime scene factors which cause abhorrence in the reactions and emotions of the human mind. Crime scenes resulting from violent deaths, and cleanup following unattended deaths with human bodies well into decomposition, demand specifically focused and dedicated expert training and oftentimes specialized equipment. Officially, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the United States Government considers bodily fluids to be bio-hazardous wastes, in cases of unattended deaths, suicides, and violent deaths. However, too often the families of the victims (or owners of the crime or accident locations) had to clean up the scene themselves, or volunteers from among their neighbors or religious organizations have offered to help. The author, Gil Reavill has written expansively on the subjects of true crime and disaster. To prepare himself for writing this book, Reavill volunteered to ride along with the Aftermath, Inc. (Aftermath) teams and to help these technicians clean the scenes to which they were called. He worked alongside the Aftermath technicians for over a year on several dozen Aftermath jobs. Aftermath is one of the first companies, if not the first, to begin developing the field of “bioremediation”. As EPA rules on biohazard cleanup were exponentially tightened in the mid-1980s, traditional Año 3, vol. VI enero-julio 2011/Year 3, vol. VI January-july 2011 www.somecrimnl.es.tl
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janitorial services or traditional cleaning services were no longer willing to clean up locations contaminated by human body fluids and/or decomposed human bodies. The founders of Aftermath, Tim Reifsteck and Chris Wilson, who are lifelong friends, created and developed their company in 1996 to fill this void and satisfy the EPA requirements. Their service also offers comfort, respect, and compassion to families by providing the most professional services they could create and manage. It thus became their business to clean up crime scenes after the police forensics specialists (crime scene investigators -- CSI) have completed their investigations at the crime locations. With the EPA rulings, the need for Aftermath's cleaning services became desperate in the United States; and the company proved itself willing to clean any crime scene in the Chicago vicinity, no matter how bloody or contaminated. In this book, the author traces the history of the men involved in the development and expansion of the company, explores the history of the company and its cleaning services, and introduces all of the actors related to the scenes which Aftermath cleans. Persons introduced are aftermath employees (often coming to the company as pairs of friends), clients who use their services, police, detectives, and coroners. Based upon the writing, the reader may easily conclude that the author, Gill Reavill is trained as an investigative journalist. This may explain why the author does not speculate on whether the technicians of Aftermath have developed philosophies and coping strategies similar to those of the workers in other socially disapproved occupations (such as honey-dippers/sewage workers, garbage collectors, and undertakers). The book is built of twelve well-written and hard hitting chapters; thirteen chapters if one counts the epilogue, which is a chapter about the collapse of the World Trade Towers in New York City, entitled, “The Dead House�. Each chapter describes a particular type of scene in need of remediation clean-up. The first explains complete dismemberment and bodily disarticulation by repeated shotgun and high-powered rifle fire. The second chapter tells of a reclusive elderly man who died in his house, but was not discovered until several summer weeks had passed. His body was totally decomposed upstairs, yet the Aftermath technicians found spinal fluids on the concrete floor of the basement downstairs. Chapter three takes the reader back in time to the summer of 1996 when the Aftermath founders, Tim and Chris, interrupted their newspaper circulation and sales business to take on a job cleaning the bedroom of a teenaged boy who had committed suicide by shooting himself through the head with a center fire rifle. Both of them had recently graduated from college with business degrees; and in remediation cleaning, they felt they had found their niche in satisfying a need which was not being realistically addressed. Both were amazed at how complex that first cleaning job proved to be; thus they set out determinedly to create a business which would develop the technological expertise with which to solve the Aftermath problem. The book, Aftermath, INC.: Cleaning Up after CSI goes Home, is absolutely fascinating in a forensic sense: That is, it is intriguing once the reader gets beyond the grossness and distastefulness of the gory and smelly details. This book will provide insight to guide those college students who wish to study forensic science and even forensic psychology. When the student can imagine him or herself helping with the Aftermath cleanups, then he or she will know that they can handle the crime scene or the scene of unattended death whether to do crime scene investigation or to decontaminate or remediate the scene. 2