Contributing Factors?

I added The The CQ Researcher to my Blog List because they recently published a couple interesting posts about forensics. In July, they published an "Overview on the report Examining Forensics", referring to a booklength report by the National Research Council on the status of forensic science in the United States. As noted in the blog, the report called for the following:
• Mandatory accreditation of forensic science labs
• Separation of labs from law enforcement and prosecutorial bodies
• Certification of lab personnel
• New standards and quality control
• Creation of an independent National Institute of Forensic Science

Most of this isn’t surprising. Accreditation and certification procedures should have been instituted long ago. What IS interesting is the call for making the forensic science labs independent for police and prosecutors. I’ll touch more on that in my next post, as I’m curious to see if anyone out there reading this has any opinions/thoughts on the matter.

Another issue contributing to the negative press about crime labs and forensic science is the problem of backlog. Kenneth Jost of The CQ Researcher discusses this in his blog post. According to the NRC report, the number of backlogged cases in the US jumped 25% between 2002 and 2005. In June, LA’s Sheriff’s Department announced it was halting DNA testing in sexual assault cases because the processing of the large number of rape-kits was too labor- and cost-intensive.

Which brings us to budgets. Science is an expensive endeavor. It’s costly to start these labs, and costly to maintain them. And if you want the best and brightest working these cases, there needs to be some incentive, be it financial, or be it job flexibility (e.g. research opportunities). There’s certainly a potential hazard in giving the state the right to decide the success of its crime labs. I’ve seen it first-hand in my state of Massachusetts. A friend of mine once referred to the State Labs as the place “where scientists go to die.” Okay, a little overdramatic, but you get the point…