ABSTRACT
The need for a comprehensive quality control program with effective quality assurance procedures cannot be overstated. Although quality control programs are generally developed for, and mainly used by the laboratory, the need to ensure a quality product does not belong in the laboratory alone. In the report issued by the National Academy of Science (Strengthening Forensic Sciences in the United States,A Path Forward) the “subspecialty”of crime scene investigation is neither criticized nor complimented in the area of quality control and quality assurance; however it clearly indicates that the forensic sciences in general must have appropriate quality control programs. The National Academy of Sciences report gives specific reasons or goals that quality assurance
programs in the laboratory should strive to meet.1 Some of them are:
• To ensure accuracy (of the analyses and practitioners’ work) • To identify issues such as mistakes, fraud and bias • To ensure that best practices are followed • To improve and/or correct
These goals must also be directed towards crime scene investigators and the crime scene investigation unit as a whole. So, if the NAS Report does not specifically recommend that crime scene units create and
implement quality control programs, they should be self-initiated. Just as the laboratory serves its customers by ensuring quality through its quality control program, so must the crime scene unit. The laboratory’s customers (e.g. the criminal justice system) must be able to rely upon the results of analyses and the interpretation of those results. The criminal justice system must be assured that the laboratory used best practices, that the analysis was free of errors and that the testimony will be accurate and free of bias and fraud. Quality however should not start here; it should start at the crime scene. The question that needs to be resolved from a crime scene unit point of view is how can the lab ensure
that the products it produces are quality if it cannot be assured of the product produced by the crime scene unit? How can a laboratory successfully build upon something that is already garbage? The laboratory must be able to trust that the evidence is cared for appropriately and was not diminished or damaged in any way especially a way that it would affect their analysis or interpretation. If it was, the lab needs to know that also. Since the whole enterprise starts at the crime scene, so must the assurance of quality, and so the
first persons that must ensure that the quality control program is effectively implemented is the crime scene unit. Crime scene investigations have their own, unique issues and complications that are not found in
the laboratory. As such, the quality control program will have to be reflective of those issues. Even if a crime scene unit incorporates elements of a quality assurance program from a laboratory, it will have to have elements unique and separate from the laboratory. An appropriate quality control program should include measures that are tailored to ensure any
issue can be rectified before it happens. Although not all quality control measures taken by any one discipline will be useful for another discipline, the goals remain the same. Contamination prevention will be discussed at length elsewhere in this text, but it is worth briefly mentioning as a function of quality at this time.
