It's been awhile since I mentioned the Crime Lab Project. For those who don't know, it was started by a group of authors and associates who became concerned "about the gap between the public's beliefs about the current state of forensic science and the reality faced by the many underfunded, understaffed labs and coroners' offices throughout the country." CLP has since tried to help raise awareness about the situation, such as bringing attention to reports like one from the Department of Justice which found a national backlog of over 500,000 cases in U.S. publicly funded crime labs, with most sources agreeing this backlog has grown tremendously since.
Another report from the DJS in 2007 wasn't much better: as of 2004, there were almost 13,500 unidentified human remains on record in medical examiner and coroners' offices across the country and only half of medical examiners and coroners' offices had policies for retaining records on unidentified human remains. Sadly, due to no national standard on ME/coroner practices, the person deciding whether or not a death will be referred for medical investigation may have no formal training in forensic science and may only be a political appointee.
For more info and to join the CLP efforts, check out this site.
Many thanks!
Posted by: Jan Burke | February 10, 2010 at 12:59 AM