Articles Published by NIJ

As medical examiner and coroner offices nationwide face a severe shortage of forensic pathologists, New Mexico has pioneered the use of CT scans to reduce autopsy numbers and reduce costs.

NIJ has funded academic institutions and medical examiners’ offices to research the determination of intentional versus accidental trauma in infants and children.

After a five-year fact-finding mission, a multi-agency working group has identified a host of problems in the U.S. medical examiner/coroner system, but solutions remain elusive.

Study examines the impact of CT scans on workflow and tallies the cost savings of postmortem CT in lieu of full autopsy.

Determining sex, age, and other forensic information from the skeleton of a young person has stymied investigators for decades.

Development of blowflies on a body is a standard forensic measure of time since death, but temperature variations can alter that development and mislead investigators.

A new postmortem image database will be a resource for research in forensic anthropology, pathology, and radiology.

Scientific inquiry into the process of decomposition has studied a wide range of mammals and developed a fundamental understanding of the stages of decomposition, but forensic scientists should use caution in applying nonhuman data to human bodies.

Measuring carbon-14 levels in human tissue could help forensic scientists determine age and year of death in cases involving unidentified human remains.