Criminal justice system applications

The scientific qualifications of the personnel assigned to police units involved in the discovery and evaluation of physical evidence are important in determining the extent of the application of the tools of the physical sciences to the problems of the criminal justice system. With regard to the staffing of these units it has been recognized that "...there is no substitute for the educational background of science, and no amount of enthusiasm on the part of a prospective employee should be accepted in lieu of a sound scientific background..." ( 1). 

Continuing the policies of assigning police officer personnel, without physical science qualifications, to the scientific units of police agencies cannot improve the quality of any of the services required of the police. The fact that such policies have been followed by police agencies in this country has inhibited the utilization of the skills and expertise of physical scientists of many specialities and the application of scientific knowledge and instrumentation to the criminal justice system. 

Since conclusions reached in forensic laboratories are used in the criminal justice system, they must leave no room for doubt. Thus, analytical methods must meet strict criteria. They must be extremely selective, reproducible, sufficiently sensitive, and suitable for qualitative and quantitative analysis. It is also highly desirable for the method to call for the minimum number of pretreatment steps and to be applicable to compound mixtures without preliminary separation of their components. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy meets these criteria. It is well... 

Forensic science can be broadly defined as the application of science to law. It is more commonly applied to those laws (criminal and civil) that are enforced by police agencies in the criminal justice system. Specifically, it is the application of the principles of chemistry and related sciences to the examination of physical evidence collected at the scene of a crime, and the interpretation of the results of that examination in a court of law by an expert. 

In practice, the Patriot Act and its successors, has circumvented the check and balance system. The Executive Branch has, for example, lowered the threshold of probable cause to the level of suspicion it has equated criminal activity with terrorist activity it has removed or delayed notice requirements for warrants it has required mandatory compliance on third parties for the production of information gathered secredy it has imposed a gag order upon notice and production of information it permits sharing of confidential personal information between investigative units and minimized the role of the judiciary. The overall effect is the Executive Branch and Justice Department are assuming power to define application of the Fourth Amendment. An additional result is the collection of a wide variety of highly personal and sensitive information on law-abiding individuals. 

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