Italy

Forensic science in Italy

A specialised structure inside one of Italy’s police forces, organised as a central service directing interregional, regional and provincial offices — and the first provider described here whose laboratories state an accreditation standard.

Fact-checkedSafety review clearedLast updated 19 September 2026Last reviewed 19 September 2026

Facts verified: September 2026

This is a static reference page, not a live feed — check anything you intend to act on with the official source.

The placement is stated in the first sentence of the force’s own account: "La Polizia Scientifica è la struttura specializzata della Polizia di Stato che interviene ogniqualvolta, per l’espletamento delle funzioni di polizia giudiziaria e preventiva, siano richiesti specifici accertamenti tecnico scientifici nei settori delle scienze biologiche, chimiche, fisiche, dattiloscopiche, informatiche e in altri ambiti tecnico-scientifici." So it is a specialised structure OF the police force, called on when judicial or preventive police functions need technical-scientific examination.

Its organisation is territorial rather than single-site. "L’ufficio centrale, il Servizio Polizia Scientifica, dirige e coordina gli uffici decentrati sul territorio: i Gabinetti interregionali e regionali, i Gabinetti provinciali e i Posti di segnalamento e documentazione." Laboratories operate at the central Service and at the interregional and regional Gabinetti. The institution dates from 1902.

Note

An accreditation standard, stated — and what it does not mean

Italy is the second provider described on this platform to publish a standard rather than leave the question open: the Polizia Scientifica "opera secondo il sistema di gestione certificato ISO 9001, mentre i laboratori sono accreditati secondo la norma ISO/IEC 17025". That is worth recording precisely because most providers here state nothing. It is also worth stating what it is NOT. ISO 9001 is a management-system certification and ISO/IEC 17025 concerns the competence of testing laboratories. Neither says anything about whether a particular technique works, whether a given result is correct, or whether any evidence may be used in court. This platform makes no claim of that kind about any system, and a standard recorded here is a fact about an institution rather than about evidence.

Uncertainty

What we could not establish

THE ARMA DEI CARABINIERI’S FORENSIC ARRANGEMENTS REMAIN UNESTABLISHED, and Italy has more than one police force with general competence, so this page describes part of a picture. The attempt is recorded rather than the outcome alone: the force’s own site publishes an index of several thousand addresses, and the pages it lists — including every one on scientific investigation — answer that they are gone, while a path taken from the live site answers normally. Its current navigation is assembled in the browser and exposes almost no addresses to a direct request. Nothing was worked around, and no Carabinieri body is described here from anyone else’s account of it.
How work is divided between the central Service, the interregional and regional Gabinetti, the provincial Gabinetti and the Posti di segnalamento e documentazione was not established beyond the statement that the central office directs and coordinates them.
Which disciplines are performed at which level was not researched. The page names fields of examination; it does not allocate them.
THE SCOPE OF THE ISO/IEC 17025 ACCREDITATION — which laboratories and which methods it covers — IS STILL NOT ESTABLISHED. The page states the standard, not its extent. The national accreditation body publishes a register of laboratories accredited to that standard, and its search returned a byte-identical page for two different searches, so no search was in fact run and nothing about any Italian laboratory’s accreditation is asserted here.
The page describes itself in promotional terms in places. None of that wording is reproduced here, and this platform makes no such claim about any provider.
How a defence obtains an independent forensic examination in Italy was not researched.
Nothing on this page says anything about what a forensic technique can establish, how well it works, or whether a court may use a result. Those are claims about evidence in criminal cases and need a different kind of source.

Sources

La Polizia scientifica — Polizia di Stato
Polizia di Stato (Italia) · Government publication · link verified 2026-09-19
SCOPE: the scientific police of the Polizia di Stato only — one of Italy’s police forces, and nothing about any other. The force’s own page, read directly. Supports that "La Polizia Scientifica è la struttura specializzata della Polizia di Stato che interviene ogniqualvolta, per l’espletamento delle funzioni di polizia giudiziaria e preventiva, siano richiesti specifici accertamenti tecnico scientifici nei settori delle scienze biologiche, chimiche, fisiche, dattiloscopiche, informatiche e in altri ambiti tecnico-scientifici". Supports the territorial structure: "L’ufficio centrale, il Servizio Polizia Scientifica, dirige e coordina gli uffici decentrati sul territorio: i Gabinetti interregionali e regionali, i Gabinetti provinciali e i Posti di segnalamento e documentazione". Supports that laboratories operate at the Servizio and at the interregional and regional Gabinetti, and that the institution dates from 1902. ACCREDITATION IS STATED, WHICH IS RARE IN THIS CORPUS: the Polizia Scientifica "opera secondo il sistema di gestione certificato ISO 9001, mentre i laboratori sono accreditati secondo la norma ISO/IEC 17025". That is a claim about a quality-management system and laboratory competence, and it is NOT a claim that any technique is reliable or that any result is correct. The page also carries promotional wording — "livelli di eccellenza", "tecnologie all’avanguardia" — which is NOT reproduced, because a self-description of excellence is not an institutional fact. The page does not mention the Arma dei Carabinieri, whose own forensic arrangements were not researched.