Can England’s legal system cope with the loss of the Forensic Science Service?

20 February 2012

You may not think much about the people behind our police force, who carry out the fingerprint checks or DNA test, even identifying a smudge on someone’s clothing; but they are a vital part of policing. In fact modern policing is based almost entirely around their findings. So why are we getting rid of our FSS (Forensic Science Service)?

Well that is not an easy question to answer, short of saying ‘budget cuts’ a rather glib response. Currently the FSS handles 60 per cent of all forensic requests from the police and employ some 3000 people. It’s hard to look at the loss of so many jobs and such an important part of policing as a necessary evil. Unlike most government sectors the FSS has no responsibility to earn money, in fact earning money would actually compromise the integrity of the results, much as it does on the public sector side of the industry, yet it seems we will now be completely reliant on a private sector industry to organise public evidence for the public court to be used by a public prosecutor (none of whom make money).

The decision to phase out the FSS is by no means a new decision, in fact it has been planned since 2010 when the government put forward information that said the FSS was costing close to £2m a month(many disagree with the figure), far beyond what the private sector of the industry would have cost. Despite this reasoning the government’s decision has been slated by most leading professionals, not hard to do when almost none of the relevant governing bodies or relevant experts where consulted about the decision to remove the FSS.

Although the end of the FSS has been on the cards for some time there are still numerous concerns over the implications of disassembling a key part of our legal system with no clear plans of what will replace it, short of the private sector increasing output by 150 per cent.

Some of the concerns to do with the future of the legal system are trivial, such as what to do with all the stored cold case and closed case file information that they have accumulated over the years, however these highlight bigger concerns.

The FSS has been around for years dealing with a huge portion of cases that will need experts and in some cases rely on the testimony of the forensic investigator in cases where the evidence is no longer attainable. This means that for appeal cases and any others that may need older forensic records they will have to find the original expert who studied the evidence, which raises the question of how do you keep track of some 3,000 forensic scientists after they have changed jobs maybe moved out of the country, or simply refuse to co-operate with a government that has discarded them so carelessly?

This is all supported in the recent inquiry into the decision to close the FSS.  The inquiry found that the knock on affects the closure would have on the justice system where “hastily overlooked” in a rush to shore up finances such as receiving expert testimony. Alan Jamison from the forensic institute agreed with the Metropolitan police force saying their concern over specialists being unavailable for court dates was well founded he said:

“The chances of this happening increase as more people change jobs, and in these circumstances they are obviously doing that. In old cases, when there is no scientist, the work may have to be re-done,”

Gary Pugh the director of forensic science at Scotland Yard has also said that:

“If a trial comes to court in June or July, we need the scientist and their case file to be available. But once they have left the Forensic Science Service, they are under no obligation whatsoever,”

“We have flagged up to the CPS that if there are key scientists on a case, we need to keep an eye on those specialists. If we can’t get them, we need to make sure someone else can give the evidence,” he continued

There is also the matter that in some cases credentials could have become out dated, even the scientist themselves could lose credibility due to the fact they have been inactive in the industry for so long.

The CCRC (criminal case review commission) an independent reviewer of miscarriages of justice has said that the amount of miscarriages not being corrected would undoubtedly increase with the added consequence of a loss of faith in the criminal justice system. The CCRC, due to the criminal appeal act of 95, has powers that currently let it demand information from the FSS pertaining to evidence used in court cases; the private sector is not included in such abilities which would create a black hole of important forensic knowledge. The CCRC has requested such information 150 times since 2005.

CCRC believe that many of their appeals will collapse if expert witnesses are lost, as many situations such as evidence destroyed by chemical tests, or toxicology tests that cannot be repeated, would only be compensated for by the direct testimony of the expert who carried out the tests.

Given the fact that around 90 per cent of those made redundant in the FSS over the last couple of years haven’t continued to work in the forensic science field there are growing concerns over the private sectors ability to cope with the added work especially in crisis situations in which sees the “supplier of last resort” required to take on tasks such as terrorist bombings like London 2005 in which 100 FSS staff completed thousands of hours of work that led to the identification of the bombers in just 24 hours and later their conviction.

As the FSS had similar obligations as emergency staff in these circumstances it was expected that they raise to the challenge unfortunately the private sector will be under no such obligations leaving a massive area in our intelligence organisation empty, a worrying concern in the run up to the Olympic Games.

Yorkshire Met has decided to expand their own forensic departments in a bid to counteract the loss of the FSS. This decision is widely considered to be financially sound, mainly due to them not having to acquire an accredited position like the private sector until 2015 (accounting for 15 per cent of overheads). They will also provide the forensic service to other police stations and private groups in hopes to make the Forensics department more lucrative.

They have also begun to outline the added paperwork that will go into using more private companies, it is believed they will need to create a set of guidelines for administration and work to be completed and how the information collected will be handled, as the level of priority cases and sensitive information that the private sector receives will increase by no less than 50 per cent.

Since the report that claimed the FSS was losing £2m a month they have managed to cut costs, it will not stop them from halting the acceptance of new cases in October however which will, in the space of  one year, give the private sector an extra 120,000.

So what is the future of forensic science in the UK? Well Gary Pugh has said he hopes to organise a system in which the police officers will take the fingerprints themselves from crime scenes, text the image back to the office and have the suspects name, picture and details sent out to patrolling cars within an astonishing 20 minutes. He is also looking into another system called “genetic fingerprint analyses” that would hopefully have the slightly less impressive turnaround time of one hour.

The police and private sector will have to initiate plans like Gary Pugh’s if it wants to meet demands in an ever increasingly complex criminal world. With DNA now able to be replicated in labs and criminals becoming more and more innovative, the loss of these valued experts will have long lasting detrimental effects. The best case scenario at this point seems to be that the Met and the private sector are doing their absolute best to rise to the challenge.

A representative of FSS labs from the union Prospect Mr J. Page who speaks for around 1000 workers has said: “It’s tragic that an entire generation of experienced forensic scientists have been consigned to the scrapheap.”