I am supposed to summarize what the CSI effect is but I don't have a good explanation for it and I don't really understand what it means very well. Can someone explain it in a way that it is not complicated to understand?

These TV shows that feature forensic and DNA evidence are popular. The so called CSI effect is that people ;especially jury pools have an unrealistic expectation of what can be proved "beyond a shadow of doubt."

The other part of the proliferation of all police procedural shows during the 2000s is the inadvertent education of criminals in the ways of evidence collection.


In 2000, the year that CSI: Crime Scene Investigation debuted, 46.9 percent of all rape cases in the United States were solved by police. By 2005, the solve rate had fallen to 41.3 percent. Some investigators attributed this decline to the CSI effect, as crime shows often explain in detail how criminals can conceal or destroy evidence. Several rape victims have reported that their assailants forced them to shower or clean themselves with bleach after their assaults.

Quote source: CSI Effect on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI_effect)