Policing UK 2013 - Police Federation

THE ROLE OF POLICE
“There are significant challenges
that need to be addressed urgently
and imaginatively and we must not
waste this golden opportunity.”
all that has been achieved in UK forensics
– by the FSS and others, and which so
many take for granted.
There need to be changes in the way
forensic services are procured. We need
to recognise the inevitable problems
when large amounts of work are switched
suddenly from one provider to another
and find better ways to ameliorate this.
We continue to suffer as a result of large
scale transfers of work from the FSS.
Dumbing down
The procurement process itself is too
prescriptive and focused too heavily on
cost as opposed to value. An unhelpful
barrier has been erected between forensic
scientists and investigators, inhibiting
development of imaginative investigative
strategies, which proved so critical in the
cases referred to above.
Forensic science is being systematically
dumbed down, with laboratories
increasingly used merely as testing houses.
If this continues, the most talented
scientists will leave for more attractive
opportunities elsewhere and our criminal
justice system will be the poorer.
We have made huge strides in
introducing quality standards in forensic
laboratories, but currently these do
not apply to forensic activities within
police forces themselves. Despite the
effectiveness of outsourcing, forces are
engaging in increasing amounts of ‘front
end forensics’, so this is a growing issue.
There should be one ‘quality’ blanket
covering the whole end-to-end process
and not just parts provided by external
companies. We should ask ourselves if it
is acceptable for forces both to investigate
crimes and present impartial, objective
scientific evidence in respect of them.
Decisions about which items to examine,
and for what, have a great influence over
what is found and how its significance is
assessed. elentless pressure on forensic
budgets means that such decisions
are becoming increasingly tight and
increasingly significant to case outcomes.
Fragmenting examinations between
different organisations presents other risks
– to chains of custody of items, and cross
contamination for example. It means that
no single person understands all the ‘ins
and outs’ of a particular case – either for
setting the most effective science strategy
or for interpreting and reporting on the
overall significance of scientific tests.
This will have far-reaching
consequences for catching criminals and
exonerating the innocent, which may take
years to be recognised or, worse still, may
never be recognised at all.
Innovative partnerships
Work outsourced to forensic providers
has shrunk considerably in recent times,
reflecting general pressure on police
budgets. If this continues unabated, there
will come a point when it will not be
sufficient to sustain a healthy competitive
market.
This will have serious ramifications for
cost, timeliness and quality of services,
resilience of suppliers to carry on
providing them, and funding for research
and development to stay one step ahead
of the criminal.
Necessity, in the form of economic
adversity, should become the mother
of invention. We should seie this
opportunity to
cast aside historical anachronisms such
as separation of fingerprints from the
rest of forensic science – they are just
another kind of specialised ‘mark’
make the interface between crime
scene investigation and forensic
science more seamless – various
models to accomplish this have
been proposed
achieve uniform quality standards –
from crime scene through to
courtroom
increase research and development
devoted to forensics
facilitate development and
introduction of point of use
technologies
relieve police forces of costs they do
not need to bear directly.
We could do all of this simply by
adjusting aspects of forensic procurement,
developing more imaginative relationships
between forces and forensic providers
– involving more outsourcing although
not necessarily in external facilities – and
creating more innovative partnerships
with universities and other researchoriented
institutions and tapping into
their funding streams.
In summary, the development of a
forensic market has been a good thing for
UK law enforcement and criminal justice
and many concerns about the closure of
the FSS are unfounded.
But there are significant challenges
that need to be addressed urgently and
imaginatively and we must not waste
this golden opportunity to reshape the
forensic landscape.
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