304
Principles and Practice of Criminalistics
having set foot in a laboratory or even having taken a core curriculum of
hard science classes, the degree has been diluted to the extent that no one is
sure what it means any more. This is unfortunate because those few programs
that do offer a true criminalistics degree find it hard to distinguish themselves.
In the 1986 edition of
Forensic Science
(Davies), Kathleen Higgins, then
of the College of (also now defunct) Criminal Justice at Northeastern Uni-
versity wrote a chapter entitled “Graduate
Education, Forensic Science’s
Answer to the Future.” She says:
Training in criminalistics in the early 1950s seemed to be headed toward a
unified scientific and professional program with a tremendous potential for
further development. However, it has literally died in its own tracks (the
number of graduate programs decreased from 12 in 1976 to 10 in 1984 and
9 in 1985), and because of a failure of implementation in facilities and
faculty, a “turnoff ” of research and development has occurred.
In 1976, Joseph Peterson and Peter DeForest reported:
Forensic science faces no problem more pressing than the education
and training of the scientists who staff the nation’s forensic laboratories. If
one examines the critical research needs of the profession, the shortage of
truly qualified laboratory scientists and supervisors, or the crisis of over-
whelming caseloads and backlogs, one finds that
the most essential element
in satisfying these needs is a core of scientifically qualified personnel. Again,
when the need for maintaining high quality control (assurance) standards
or for developing high ethical awareness among the professionals is under
discussion, we inevitably find that laboratory personnel and the quality of
their educational backgrounds are the main focus.
And now, 9 years later, everything Peterson and DeForest said is still
fully applicable and embodies the basic needs of the profession.
As Higgins refers to Peterson and DeForest, we continue the lament. The
future she predicts is now here, and we are in worse shape than ever with
regard to graduate education in forensic science.
Although sophisticated instrumentation is now routinely employed in
forensic analyses, and the technical complexity
of the examinations per-
formed continues to increase, this is not our main concern. A reasonably
bright technician can reliably perform a competent instrumental analysis;
advanced degrees are not needed for this aspect of the work. It is the inter-
pretation of the data from those complex examinations that increasingly
requires a complete and subtle understanding of the principles underlying
the instrumentation, and the impact of many layers of electronics, hardware,
and software on the final data. And, precisely because the laboratory work
has
become so refined, the questions regarding forensic evidence must shift
to the areas of logical inference, statistical probabilities, and subtle interpretive
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Ethics and Accountability — The Profession of Forensic Science
305
issues. In our opinion, these areas of inquiry lie at the heart of criminalistics
regardless of how the data are obtained. Graduate education provides the
opportunity to learn how to formulate questions and solve problems in
addition to acquiring specific laboratory skills. The diverse and distinctive
nature of the problems presented by forensic
casework requires an educa-
tional specialization, and at a high level.
A well-known medical talk show host answered a caller’s question about
a physician assistant performing some minor surgery. He said that the critical
decision that the doctor needed to make was what procedure needed to be
performed, and if surgery was the most appropriate option. The actual pro-
cedure, he maintained, was quite routine and could well be competently
performed by a technical-level person. We can draw an exact parallel from
this medical example to forensic science. The criminalist’s most important
job is to decide what
evidence should be examined, using which analyses
and, in fact, whether any analysis would be useful in answering the legal
questions posed in the case. The knowledge to make the critical preliminary
decisions regarding the evidence, and to interpret the final results thought-
fully, is what forensic science is all about; this is what forensic education
should emphasize.
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