California Crime Laboratory Task Force Disbands

A recent edi­to­r­ial in the SacBee crit­i­cizes the Cal. Crime Lab Task Force for disbanding.

The sur­pris­ing deci­sion of the California Crime Lab Task Force to vote itself out of exis­tence ear­lier this month is a mis­take that puts jus­tice itself at risk. It’s a deci­sion that should be quickly revis­ited and rescinded.

Created in 2007 and com­posed of defense attor­neys, crime lab direc­tors, pros­e­cu­tors and police, the task force was charged with review­ing the state of foren­sic sci­ence in California and report­ing back on ways to improve it.

It pro­duced a volu­mi­nous report last year with 41 rec­om­men­da­tions to improve con­di­tions at the state’s foren­sic labs. After the report high­lighted prob­lems at labs and rec­om­mended fixes, a major­ity of the panel decided that the task force should dis­band and await expected fed­eral action designed to improve crime lab stan­dards and prac­tices nation­wide. Those sup­port­ing end­ing the panel say the California Lab Directors’ own accred­i­ta­tion body will pro­vide suf­fi­cient oversight.

The edi­to­r­ial, and reader com­ments, goes fur­ther in say­ing that crime labs need more government/independent over­sight. Lets step back and look at what the task force was cre­ated to do to begin with. It’s pur­pose was to inves­ti­gate California crime labs, find areas that could be improved upon, and then report those find­ings. Was there any author­ity granted to them as a reg­u­la­tory body? Seriously. It’s highly unlikely that a south­ern California munic­i­pal crime lab (not refer­ring to any lab in par­tic­u­lar) would take orders from a far removed task force.

Another point was noted that the task force thought the lab’s own accred­it­ing body could han­dle over­sight. These accred­ited labs are audited every year, if the accred­it­ing body hadn’t found the same issues the task force found, what makes the task force think the accred­it­ing body will agree with the task force and act now?

One accu­racy in the edi­to­r­ial was that there is a need for inde­pen­dent over­sight, that’s par­tially true, the inde­pen­dent part. The labs need to be removed from police and pros­e­cu­to­r­ial agen­cies. They can still be gov­ern­ment con­trolled, since giv­ing up con­trol of any­thing is the antithe­sis of the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion it would be highly unlikely for gov­ern­ment to sanc­tion the pri­va­ti­za­tion of the foren­sic industry.

They could be inde­pen­dent agen­cies. The could be under the court sys­tem. They could be asso­ci­ated with pub­lic uni­ver­si­ties. There are many poten­tial solu­tions to the cur­rent crime lab struc­tural prob­lems. Eventually, the pub­lic will demand the pri­va­ti­za­tion of crime labs. Only then can the labs be really held account­able for accu­racy, both at the lab and the ana­lyst level.

Serious errors would result in the dis­missal of employ­ees that either delib­er­ately “doc­tor results” to appease inter­ested par­ties, or can’t meet train­ing goals, whereas today it can be very dif­fi­cult to ter­mi­nate a gov­ern­ment employee.

Laboratories that have con­tin­ual prob­lems would lose pub­lic trust, and there­for busi­ness. The end result the entire lab would go out of business.

The cost sav­ings to the pub­lic could be very high, as it’s unlikely that rank-and-file pri­vate foren­sic sci­en­tists could com­mand six-figure incomes, with all but guar­an­teed annual pay increases.