Advertisement

CrowdSolve wants to turn amateurs into true detectives

There are libraries full of stories featuring amateur detectives showing police officers how to do their job. Hell, the Serial podcast has shown what one journalist can uncover even when investigating a murder that's more than a decade old. If you've ever thought that you'd fancy joining the ranks of Sarah Koenig, Sherlock Holmes and Jessica Fletcher, then a new project is looking to recruit you.

CrowdSolve is a website that hopes to acquire the raw case data for a crime and upload it for its members to scour through. The idea being that people with lots of free time on their hands will be able to find a nugget seemingly missed by harried police officers in-between arguments with the chief. Given the popularity of Serial, CrowdSolve's founder Colin Heilbut is hoping that the first case to be published will be that of Adnan Syed.

Of course, as with any project in 2014, the site won't be launching without users putting hands into their pockets. CrowdSolve is currently asking for donations on Indiegogo, with a target of $50,000 necessary before the documents can begin to flow. The bulk of that cash will be used to obtain the relevant documents ready for a launch around August next year. That said, there's still some questions about if the site will be able to successfully launch given the legal minefield. Still, we're sure that whatever happens, it'll be a good opportunity for a rational debate to take place -- it's not as if uninformed mobs making snap judgments about real-world crimes has ever backfired, has it?