Forensic science in Singapore

Singapore places its forensic work inside the Health Sciences Authority, whose stated mission is “to wisely regulate health products, serve the administration of justice, secure the nation’s blood supply and safeguard public health”. Serving the administration of justice is one of four functions in a single body.

The authority describes the relevant work as applied sciences: it “serve[s] the administration of justice with the use of forensic medicine, forensic science and analytical chemistry testing”. Forensic medicine and forensic science are therefore in the same organisation as health-product regulation and the national blood supply.

AnalysisThis is the most distinctive arrangement in the forensic pages published here so far. The Netherlands places forensic science in an agency of the justice ministry; Ireland in an associated office of the justice department; Portugal in a State Laboratory within the administration of justice. Singapore places it in a health authority. The function is comparable; the institutional home is not, and the difference is the reason a reader cannot carry an assumption from one system to another.