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Abstract
The crime laboratory has not typically been thought of as a decision stage within the criminal justice process. However, increasing reliance on forensic evidence has led to necessary discretion about what types of cases to accept, what evidence to analyze, and how to prioritize workload. This article reports the results of semi-structured interviews conducted with state and local police agencies, prosecutors, and crime laboratory personnel in ten U.S. jurisdictions. The focus is on controlled substances cases, which represent a substantial proportion of the case workload for crime laboratories, as well as for the police and prosecutors. Results demonstrate that communication between crime laboratories, the police, and prosecutors is essential to maximizing the efficient use of limited laboratory resources. Poor communication can contribute to overflowing police evidence rooms, confusion about evidence retention policies, rushed and unnecessary laboratory requests, and the generation of “artificial backlogs” in crime laboratories. A key for improving coordination was the presence of effective laboratory submission guidelines and case tracking systems. These factors were associated with reductions in both the number of controlled substance cases pending analysis and the analysis turnaround time. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.
Notes
Courts in several states, for example the Minnesota Court of Appeals, have allowed for presumptive tests in drug cases to establish probable cause rather than a confirmatory analysis.
Although drug evidence accounts for the largest share of forensic workload (compared with toxicology, latent prints, DNA analysis, and other requests), the process of identifying controlled substances is not as time consuming as other forensic functions. This is reflected in the actual processing of approximately 800 controlled substances requests per examiner per year (Peterson & Hickman 2005; Durose 2008).
Data from that study show that in Chicago controlled substances made up 55% of the total cases submitted to the crime laboratory in 1979. Comparable figures from other cities in the same study include Oakland, California (48%), Peoria, Illinois (60%), and Kansas City, Missouri (30%).
Interestingly, throughout the 1970s, researchers noted that laboratories were being underutilized relative to the amount of evidence that could potentially have been collected and submitted (Benson, Stacy, & Worley 1970; Parker & Gurgin 1972; Parker & Peterson 1972; Peterson 1974). Contemporary discussions seem to focus on potential overutilization of laboratories or on limited laboratory resources in the face of increased submissions.
This pervasive misconception has led many to call for greater independence of laboratories in terms of both administrative and physical separation (National Academy of Sciences 2009).
There were exceptions to this rule if the analysis was needed to support an ongoing investigation in which the suspect could not be named for confidentiality purposes at the time of the request for analysis.