Kriminalistická olfaktorika a její budoucnost – Hladíková Dominika (2026)

At the end of summer 2023, on the bottom of the Slapy Reservoir, dozens of metres below the surface, where neither human eyes nor technology detected anything, a police dog used its sense of smell to find a victim’s body. A single breath was enough to reveal the truth that sonar and modern instruments would have left hidden. Yet this ability is still being questioned, and dog handlers must convince the courts that a dog’s nose has an irreplaceable place in criminal proceedings. Forensic olfaction developed slowly, amid scepticism, disbelief and efforts to gain recognition as a serious method of evidence. Today it stands between tradition and the future: on one side, service dogs capable of detecting a human trace even beneath the water’s surface; on the other, olfactronics, promising the cool precision of machines. More than technology is at stake: the question is whether scent traces will remain merely supporting evidence or one day become a key to uncovering the truth, as firmly established as fingerprints or DNA. The book covers the development of forensic odour science, service dog training, scent traces, the human odour and its specific features, training dogs for scent work, the characteristics of a dog’s sense of smell, procedures and rules for the olfactory identification of people, the search for and securing of scent traces, olfactory comparison, methods and rules for olfactory identification, the characteristics of forensic olfactronics, the future of olfactronics and olfaction, the use of scent identification as evidence, and the main problems of olfaction in the justice system. The contents are in Czech.