Crime

When bodies decompose, the types of bacteria on and around the body change in predictable ways. These patterns can be used to estimate time of death, a crucial clue in solving murders.

The Obama administration is expected to announce a new program Friday that would once again allow some prisoners access to federal college funding.

Lawmakers want to prohibit police officers from viewing video from their body cameras before they write their reports. It's part of an effort to bring more transparency to policing.

Dallas Mildenhall is one of the world's few forensic pollen experts. He recently identified a rare, mutated pollen grain that helped police crack a murder case in his native New Zealand.

Police today are identifying fewer murder suspects than they did a generation ago. One criminologist says that may be because departments are more focused on preventing crimes than on making arrests.