Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijlcj The CSI-education effect: Do potential criminals benefit from forensic TV series? Andreas M. Baranowski ∗ , Anne Burkhardt, Elisabeth Czernik, Heiko Hecht Department of Psychology, Johannes Gutenberg-University, Mainz, Germany ABSTRACT Forensic series have become popular over the last two decades. They have raised the importance of forensic evidence in the eyes of the public (CSI effect). However, it has not been investigated to what extent criminals may learn about forensic evidence through these shows. We used multiple approaches to tackle this potential CSI-education effect. First, we analyzed crime statistics for crime and detection rate. Second, we asked convicted criminals about their impressions about the usefulness of crime shows for covering up a crime. Third, we asked fans of crime series and a control group of non-watchers to slip into the role of a criminal by enacting the cleaning up a murder crime scene. Finally, a sample of 120 subjects had to clean up the scene of a would-be murder using a model. In none of these experiments did we find supportive evidence for the CSI- education effect. “People lie, Professor. The only thing that we can count on is the evidence.” Gil Grissom in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation 1. Introduction In 2002, Time Magazine published an article on the technological advances in crime fighting (Kluger, 2002). In this article, the author mentions the concern of forensic scientists who fear that the public perception of criminal laboratories is unrealistically shaped by television drama. Kluger also points out the challenges for the jury-based North American legal system. Juries might be compromised by inflated expectations with regard to forensic evidence, leading to a higher number of acquittals than there would be without forensic television dramas. This was dubbed the CSI effect, after the popular franchise CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Soon it was applied to any effect popular crime series might have on the public, including on criminals, the police, and potential students of forensic sciences (for an overview of the media coverage of the CSI effect, see Cole and Dioso-Villa, 2009). In this paper we investigated whether CSI effects can be backed up experimentally. We focused on one aspect that we dub the CSI- education effect, which has not yet been researched (Cole and Dioso-Villa, 2009; call this effect the CSI police chief's effect). This effect describes the potential pick-up of criminal know-how from forensic television series, which would be a challenge for the crime- fighting community. Even though no evidence for this effect has been presented yet, researchers and the media are very credulous of the education effect (e.g. Baranowski and Hecht, 2015; Cole and Dioso-Villa, 2009; Sarapin and Sparks, 2015; Cavender and Detusch, 2007). We first describe this CSI effect and evaluate and challenge the evidence that has been presented thus far. We then report four experiments designed to expose the effect. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijlcj.2017.10.001 Received 5 June 2017; Received in revised form 3 October 2017; Accepted 5 October 2017 ∗ Corresponding author. Department of Psychology, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Wallstrasse 3, floor 6, 55099 Mainz, Germany. E-mail address: baranowski@uni-mainz.de (A.M. Baranowski). International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 1756-0616/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: Baranowski, A.M., International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijlcj.2017.10.001