Multimedia Listing

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) conducts the Census of Publicly Funded Forensic Crime Laboratories (CPFFCL) to provide insight into federal, state, county, and municipal crime labs that are funded solely by the government or whose parent organization is a government agency. The most recent CPFFCL provides national-level data on the workload and operations of crime labs during 2020. Of the 326 eligible crime labs and multilab systems in the 2020 CPFFCL, 293 (90%) provided responses to at least some of the survey questions.

This presentation explores a series of research studies aimed at assessing the accuracy, repeatability, and reproducibility of forensic pattern evidence examination decisions across various disciplines, including latent prints, firearms, shoeprints, and handwriting.  Key topics covered include a comprehensive overview of the design factors in these four large-scale research studies, as well as a response to common critical observations regarding the experimental design and the interpretation of results.

Change can be intimidating and making a transition to a paperless system can be daunting task. This presentation discusses two perspectives on how laboratories embraced technology for administrative and casework processes, the lessons learned, and the vision for additional growth.

This webinar was hosted by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on February 2, 2023. 

This webinar presents laboratory managers with a discussion on case management in forensic science laboratories. All forensic science laboratories struggle with caseloads and backlogs in some way and to varying extremes. The answer to this struggle is a process to manage caseloads through evidence triage, case information management, and communication. A discussion on the challenges involved in case management is followed by practical experiences in writing and implementing case management policies.

This webinar shares insight into why it is important to have a positive quality culture within a laboratory. Attendees see how establishing a culture where the proactive pursuit of quality is a positive for a laboratory. When actively pursuing quality, staff will help management navigate and be successful during the time of change. The presentation discusses how change, whether small or large, can be perceived and affect employees differently, and will provide some strategies on how to mitigate the effect change could have on their employees.

This webinar introduces attendees to the Organization of Scientific Area Committees for Forensic Science (OSAC) Registry of Standards, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Technical Committee (TC) on Forensic Science, and the Academy Standards Board (ASB). Attendees learn about forensic science standard development in the national and international space as well as standard implementation tools provided by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS).

This webinar discusses the impact that the pandemic has had on the physical and emotional wellness of employees in the laboratory setting and will focus on personnel issues that workplaces may experience following the pandemic. Topics that will be covered include supervising employees working in a remote environment, implementing hybrid working programs, and bringing employees back into the office.

This webinar will focus on the journey through medical marijuana and the decriminalization of hemp with legalization on the horizon in the state of Ohio. We will also focus on the impact that legalization has made in the state of Colorado over the past 10 years. The journey between these two states will demonstrate the challenges and needs for a shift in the analytical approach.

This webinar was hosted by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on April 5, 2022, as part of the ASCLD Train the Director Webinar Series.

The NIST Organization of Scientific Area Committees (OSAC) for Forensic Science advances the mission of strengthening forensic practice by facilitating the development of technically sound, science-based standards through a formal standard developing organization (SDO) process. Although, there are numerous challenges facing laboratory managers in implementing standards, OSAC has observed scores of forensic science service providers implement standards listed on the OSAC Registry and has gathered helpful guidance from the experiences of those laboratories.