CSI: Mississippi

As a retired crime scene investigator and fingerprint specialist, I read Radley Balko's "CSI: Mississippi" (November) with great interest. Balko's article illuminated the major problem facing forensic science today, namely, a gradual but continuing deterioration in ethics, honesty, and integrity.

When I entered the field in the early 1970s, the most important concept I was taught was that my allegiance was to the evidence--not to an arrest, not to a prosecution, but to the evidence. In those days, those of us on the police side and those on the crime lab side strongly believed in this. I have known several professionals who endangered their careers by maintaining their allegiance to this concept.

In the last 30 years, I have watched a change in the field. In areas like crime scene investigation and fingerprint science, many agencies have begun assigning otherwise broken personnel to these positions or, more often, cheapening the job by bringing in untrained personnel at low salaries and turning them loose. I was brought into a system that oversaw my activity and ensured that, even if on the job, my training demanded continued improvement in my knowledge, abilities, and skills. Today many small and even medium-sized agencies employ CSI and latent fingerprint examiners whose entire training consists of some junior college courses and self-training on the job.

Within crime labs, the changes are different but just as hazardous. Where once criminologists were devoted to the evidence, many have now become more prosecution-oriented. At the same time, the entry of the newer generations, with the changes in ethics that are seen elsewhere, has endangered the quality of impartial results.

And then there's the "CSI effect." Since the advent of CSI, its spin-offs, and series such as Crossing Jordan and NCIS, television shows have "educated" the public in forensic science. That they are fictitious renditions is lost on too many viewers, who have taken cases to task in court for not meeting the standards established by Gil Grissom and his team.

There needs to be outreach to truly educate the public in what forensic science can and cannot do. While "every criminal leaves something and takes something" from every scene, it is not always possible to locate this evidence, especially within the limits of science as we know it.

Paul R. Laska

Palm City, FL

COPYRIGHT 2008 Reason Foundation
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning