Articles Published by NIJ

In this study, NIJ-funded researchers examined how Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners can use a practitioner-oriented evaluation toolkit to assess the impact of their programs.

A new test for detecting and identifying illegal drugs in oral fluids may be superior to the current test widely used in the field by law enforcement, according to researchers in this study.

An NIJ-funded study explored injury and forensic evidence in sexual assault cases using data from different types of medical examiners, laboratories, and the police.

Fiber evidence has long been an important part of criminal cases, for it can associate a suspect with a crime scene. This project details new analytical procedures that allow fiber comparisons that are more detailed than standard forensic practices.

Researchers create a metric to determine the difficulty of matching latent and known fingerprints, then link that difficulty to error rates.

Identifying a new drug that is very similar in structure to other drugs is important for investigators. Researchers in this project determined that these drugs may be better separated using ultra high-performance supercritical fluid chromatography.

Synthetic cathinones, a class of mood-altering stimulants popular among recreational drug users, can be unstable when stored in blood or urine samples, and may be problematic when used as evidence in court.

Making imaging technologies available to forensic pathologists as common practice — although not without challenges — will help improve medicolegal death investigations in the United States.

The ability of Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) instruments to detect practically the entire periodic table of elements very quickly and without the complexity of other systems makes them an economic choice for forensic analysis.