Is there a national forensic laboratory?

AnalysisThe placement question is an independence question wearing an organisational-chart disguise. An examiner whose employer is the investigating body works alongside the people whose case the result will help or hurt. That does not make the result wrong, and the discipline’s controls exist precisely to make placement matter less — but it is why the arrangement is worth stating rather than assuming.

The Netherlands concentrates national capability in one body. The Netherlands Forensic Institute is a body of the Ministry of Justice and Security, and describes itself as an international centre of knowledge and expertise in forensic science with nearly forty areas of expertise.

England and Wales does the opposite and does not have a national forensic service at all. What holds the field together is a regulator rather than a provider: the Forensic Science Regulator’s own statement of priorities is that quality standards should apply equally whether services are delivered by small or large organisations, private companies, public laboratories, police forces or individuals, and should run from crime scene to court and in all sectors.

Germany shows a third pattern, and it is visible in the procedural code rather than in an organisational chart. Section 87(2) of the Code of Criminal Procedure requires that one of the two physicians performing an autopsy be a court physician, or the head of a public forensic-medical or pathological institute, or a physician of that institute with forensic-medical expertise. The statute presupposes standing public institutes and routes work to them by naming them.

Across the arrangements sit voluntary networks. The European Network of Forensic Science Institutes describes itself as a network of forensic institutes engaged in quality-assurance and best-practice work — which is how institutes in unlike national structures reach common practice without a common employer.

• Common belief: Every country has a national forensic laboratory.

  In practice: England and Wales does not. Provision there is mixed — private companies, public laboratories, police forces and individuals — held together by a regulator applying common standards rather than by a national provider.

• Common belief: A state forensic institute is part of the police.

  In practice: The Netherlands Forensic Institute is a body of the Ministry of Justice and Security. Whether forensic capability sits with the police, with a justice ministry, or outside government entirely is a national arrangement, and English usage tends to blur the three.

• Common belief: Private forensic providers are unregulated.

  In practice: In England and Wales the Regulator’s stated priority is that standards apply equally whether services are delivered by private companies, public laboratories, police forces or individuals.

• Common belief: Where a laboratory sits is an administrative detail.

  In practice: It determines who employs the examiner and who is nearby while the work is done. That is why systems state the arrangement in law or in institutional charter rather than leaving it to convenience.

Three systems, three arrangements that are not variants of one another.

• One national institute inside the justice ministry — the Netherlands Forensic Institute.
• No national service; mixed provision unified by a statutory regulator applying common standards — England and Wales.
• Standing public forensic-medical and pathological institutes, presupposed and named by the procedural code — Germany, StPO § 87(2).

AnalysisPlacement determines what a defence can ask about. Where the examiner is employed by the investigating body, the relationship is a proper subject for examination; where the examiner is a commercial provider, the commercial relationship is. Neither is an allegation — both are facts a court is entitled to know.

It also determines what regulation has to reach. A system with one institute can regulate through the institute; a system with a market has to regulate the activity wherever it is carried on, which is why the English scheme is drafted around activities and persons rather than around organisations.

• Three arrangements are described from official sources. Caseload, capacity, turnaround, funding and quality are not described for any of them, and no comparison of performance is made or implied.
• What individual disciplines a given institute covers, and how work is allocated between providers, were not researched.

Related: who regulates forensic science, who investigates a death, and the forensic scientist. Forensic staff are one of several professional groups working inside justice organisations without police powers — see civilian roles in police organisations.