NRLEA

Forensic Investigation

Forensic science can be simply defined as the application of science to the law. In criminal cases forensic scientists are often involved in the search for and examination of physical traces, which might be useful for establishing or excluding an association between someone suspected of committing a crime and the scene of the crime or victim.  DNA evidence has become an increasingly powerful tool for solving both violent crimes and property crimes, such as homicide, sexual assault, and burglaries.

Forensic crime laboratories are responsible for examining and reporting on physical evidence collected during criminal investigations for federal, state, and local jurisdictions. The nation’s forensic crime laboratories receive requests for a variety of forensic services, such as DNA analysis, controlled substance identification, and latent fingerprint examination.  DNA evidence collected from a crime scene can implicate or eliminate a suspect, similar to the use of fingerprints. It also can analyze unidentified remains through comparisons with DNA from relatives. Additionally, when evidence from one crime scene is compared with evidence from another using Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), those crime scenes can be linked to the same perpetrator locally, statewide, and nationally.

Medical examiners and coroners’ offices are responsible for the medico-legal investigation of death.  They may conduct death scene investigations, perform autopsies, and determine the cause and manner of death when a person has died as a result of violence, under suspicious circumstances, without a physician in attendance, or for other reasons.  Depending on the circumstances of the death, characteristics of the death scene, the decedent’s medical history, and other factors, death cases may be cleared without the medical examiner or coroner accepting jurisdiction and conducting an additional investigation to determine the cause and manner of death.

 

Summary Findings

• There were 389 publicly funded forensic crime laboratories in 2005, up from 351 in 2002. 
• Publicly funded forensic crime laboratories had nearly 12,000 full-time employees and received an estimated 2.7 million cases in 2005.  The combined annual budget for all laboratories exceeded $1 billion.
• An estimated 359,000 cases were backlogged at the end of 2005, half of which were controlled substance tests.
• A total of 1,998 medical examiners and coroners’ (ME/C) offices were included in the BJS census, including offices in the District of Columbia and in each State except Louisiana.  The majority of ME/C offices in 2004 were county coroners’ offices (1,590 or 80%), most of which served small jurisdictions (less than 25,000 persons).
• Medical examiners and coroners’ (ME/C) offices employed an estimated 7,320 full-time equivalent employees and provided about 2,000 death investigation services across the United States in 2004.  Estimated annual budgets for these offices totaled $718.5 million, an average of $387,000 per office.
• Nearly one million human death cases were referred by medical and law enforcement personnel to the nation’s ME/C offices in 2004, accounting for approximately 40% of all deaths in the United States that year. ME/C offices in 2004 accepted about half of all referred cases for further investigation.
• In a typical year, ME/C offices reported that they handled about 4,400 unidentified human decedents of which about 1,000 remained unidentified after one year.

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