Written submission by Sean Doyle of Linked Forensic Consultants Ltd (FST0028)

 

  1. Having now watched the evidence broadcast on the 13th of April I wish to add to the brief submission I have already made. I wish to raise issues related to un-accredited forensics science providers.

 

  1. I am a director of a small forensic science consultancy based in Wellington, New Zealand. The principal aim of the company is to advance the quality of scientific evidence. The consultancy does this by providing expert witness, quality management, training and education, and research services.

 

  1. Although based in New Zealand we undertake as significant amount of UK based work including defence review.

 

  1. I am also the Director of Quality of the FIRMS Network Ltd, a company registered in England, which promotes the forensic application of isotope analysis. FIRMS exercises a regulatory function and is certified to ISO9001:2008.

 

  1. For 35 years I worked as a scientific Civil Servant beginning my career at LGC and finishing as the Principal Scientist at the Forensic Explosives Laboratory (FEL) part of the Defence Science & Technology Laboratory (Dstl) an agency of the MOD. The work that I undertook during that career was forensic science.

 

  1. I have a broad and deep knowledge of quality management. Following the miscarriages of justice in the early ‘90s FEL was one of the first laboratories to adopt quality management in an effort to improve performance and rebuild the reputation of forensic science. FEL gained accreditation to the then new standard ISO17025:1998 in 1997 and has maintained it ever since. This has resulted in FEL becoming one of the best (in terms of quality) forensic science laboratories in the world.

 

  1. I was a member of what is now the Association of Forensic Science Providers (AFSP), publishers of one of the most important standards in forensic science (The Association of Forensic Science Providers 2009). I represented Dstl. I was also a member of a number of European groups improving the quality of forensic science in the EU. I was a Council for the Registration of Forensic Practitioners (CRFP) director, assessor and registrant.

 

  1. In broad terms I wish to reflect on the risk to the CJS from non-accredited organisations. The non-accredited areas mentioned, if I recall correctly, were;

 

  1. I will address them in a different order. 

 

  1. The four basic steps in the forensic process might be considered to be;

 

  1. Scene investigation,
  2. Laboratory examination,
  3. Interpretation, and
  4. Reporting.

 

Crime Scene Investigation

  1. There was much talk of an end-to-end forensic process, from crime scene to court. This is partly because it has long been recognised that quality systems compliant with an ISO standard have been adopted mostly by laboratory based forensic science providers (FSP) while organisations providing crime scene investigation (CSI) operate without such a quality framework. In simple terms laboratories are accredited and CSI units are not.

 

  1. Scene investigation, involving the selection, collection and examination of evidence at a crime scene; is arguably the step that carries the highest risk. Mistakes made at the crime scene are hard to remedy later in the forensic process. The absence of a suitable regulatory framework for CSI was recognised a long time ago. According to my records efforts to plug this gap started in earnest in 2006. Home Office officials were very much involved in the development of a suitable regulatory framework.

 

  1. The first result was the publication in 2008 of EA-5/03 M:2008 ‘Guidance fro the Implementation of ISO/IEC 17020 in the field of crime scene investigation’. This document was prepared jointly by the European Network of Forensic Science Institutes (ENFSI) and European co-operation for Accreditation (EA). Again Home Office officials were part of the team that prepared this guidance document.

 

  1. Therefore, in 2008 organisations providing CSI had an ISO standard against which they could be accredited; ISO17020 interpreted by the guidance document EA-5/03 M:2008.

 

  1. It should be noted that EA, ILAC and IAF guidance documents are often the de facto standard against which conformity assessment bodies (CAB), such as UKAS, accredit.

 

  1. As far as I am aware, UKAS first offered accreditation of organisations offering CSI to ISO17020 in 2011. It is important to note that the only organisation so accredited is Orchid Cellmark, a private sector supplier. In addition, police providers in jurisdictions outside the UK have been accredited for CSI since 2011.

 

  1. Given Home Office involvement in the development and publication of a standard for organisations providing CSI, the period of availability, and the risk to the CJS, I find it astonishing that police providers have been given until 2020 to gain accreditation for CSI. And based on the evidence given that target will be missed.

 

  1. I should add that based on my experience, and given a fair wind and a willing management, gaining accreditation to an ISO standard should not take more than two years.

 

  1. One wonders what action the FSR might take if the Codes of Practice and Conduct were put on a statutory footing before police suppliers had gained accreditation.

 

Fingerprints

  1. This forensic discipline has attracted and continues to attract much criticism. There is a large body of relevant scholarship. The Committee can examine it for themselves. The Scottish Fingerprint Enquiry (Campbell 2011) and the NAS Report (National Research Council 2009) are good primers. While the likelihood might be low the consequences of a misidentification can be severe. Both ISO17025 and ISO17020 provide a regulatory framework. The operation of un-accredited police fingerprint bureaux exposes the CJS to unnecessary risk.

 

Digital Forensics

  1. At present I do not consider myself qualified to comment apart from stating again the obvious risk of using un-accredited FSPs.

 

Defence review

  1. The main group un-accredited at present are Small Medium Enterprise (SMEs) and Sole Traders (STs) conducting defence review. While I fully accept the need for compliance with quality standards I would not regard this group, which includes my company, as presenting a high risk to the CJS and therefore need not be a high priority.

 

  1. Being a commercial company we voluntarily work to the highest possible standards and comply with all relevant codes and standards including those of the FSR. We also have our own code of practice and service delivery standards. In our experience experts acting for the prosecution rarely comply with existing standards because there is no effective enforcement.  The regulation of expert scientific evidence is very light touch or non-existent. Therefore, if and when the FSR is given statutory powers of enforcement his or her first actions may well be directed at those FSPs providing services to the police and prosecution authorities. 

 

  1. The most obvious standard for SMEs/STs conducting defence review is ISO17020. However, a new guidance document from UKAS would need to be prepared and published first which on past experience may take a number of years.

 

  1. In principle we (and I am sure all SMEs and STs) welcome the opportunity to gain accreditation. The issue is cost. 

 

  1. UKAS gives some indicative fees for accreditation to ISO17025, i.e. for a laboratory. According to UKAS the minimum fee for a small organisation to gain accreditation to ISO17025 is around £7.5k. The fee for maintaining accreditation is around £3.5k p/a and approximately £5k for reassessment. In addition to the UKAS fees must be added the internal costs of compliance. In my experience an organisation wishing to gain and maintain accreditation to ISO17025 would need to employ a quality manager, at least on a part time basis.  Compliance would also require staff to conduct internal audits resulting in an operational/opportunity cost. In addition, the organisation would need to fund staff training. The example is based on ISO17025. ISO17020 as interpreted by UKAS may well be a more complex and prescriptive standard which would mean higher compliance costs.

 

  1. The main source of income for this group is legal aid. Like LGC, SMEs and STs need to turn a profit. Given current legal aid rates and continuing downward pressure this is increasingly difficult. If SMEs and ST’s are to be required to shoulder compliance costs then legal aid rates must be increased to help meet that cost. When I left FEL the real hourly charge out rate was around £500/hr (admittedly the investigation of explosives related crime is at the expensive end of the range), in contrast legal aid authorities are reluctant to approve rates above £100/hr.

 

Final comments

  1. If it is decided that SMEs and STs are required to obtain accreditation for defence review then;

 

  1. Taking account of cost we would welcome the opportunity to gain accreditation to ISO17020. Nevertheless, we are going ahead with gaining certification to ISO9001:2015 which we feel meets our needs regarding quality management.

 

  1. UKAS were one of if not the first CAB to accredit FSPs to ISO17025. I have had the pleasure of working with UKAS assessors in the past and hold them in the highest regard. We have direct experience of the quality of other CABs. In our opinion UKAS are a world class CAB.

 

  1. I was concerned and surprised to learn that FSR does not accept the NAS recommendation #4 that forensic science provision should be outside the administrative control of the police and/or prosecutors. This recommendation is being acted on by the US Dept of Justice. As I have stated before there is a wealth of evidence that the greater the separation between the police and forensic science provision the better the forensic science and the better the justice. As the FSR said, opinion must be supported by evidence and the body of evidence does not support her ‘school of thought’.

 

April 2016

 

Campbell, Anthony. The Fingerprint Enquiry, Scotland. Inquiry, APS Group Scotland, 2011.

National Research Council. Strengthening forensic science in the United States: a path forward. Committee Report, Washington DC: The National Academies Press, 2009.

The Association of Forensic Science Providers. “Standards for the formulation of evaluative forensic science expert opinion.” Science and Justice 49 (2009): 161-164.

 

 

             

 

             

 

 

 

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