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July 1999 Volume 1 Number
2
Presentations at the
International Symposium on Setting Quality Standards for the
Forensic Community
San Antonio, Texas
May 3-7, 1999
Part 1
The following abstracts
of the presentations are ordered alphabetically by authors' last
names.
Understanding DNA Evidence: Challenges and
Opportunities Ahead
F. R. Bieber
Harvard Medical School
Boston, Massachusetts
More than a decade of steady
efforts on the part of the forensic community has produced a
solid body of data that supports the use of standard laboratory
techniques and procedures for use in forensic genetic typing.
These methods have included use of sizing methods to detect length
polymorphisms—both restriction fragment length polymorphisms
(RFLP) and variable number of tandem repeat polymorphisms (VNTR).
More recently, gel-based matrices and capillary electrophoresis
have been developed and validated for detection and typing of
short tandem repeat (STR) polymorphisms. Sequence variation can
be detected by both reverse dot-blot methods to detect allelic
sequence variation in the HLA DQ-alpha and other loci and by
direct sequencing of portions of the mitochondrial chromosome.
Much of the international forensic community now has embraced
STR typing for routine use in typing of evidentiary samples and
for civil paternity testing. At the same time, many of the statistical
questions have been addressed and resolved, including questions
of population substructure and of allelic diversity in many human
population groups and questions surrounding databases and data
banks for forensic use.
Although the forensic community
is successfully meeting the current demand for DNA profiling,
ongoing efforts will be required to meet the challenges of new
techniques of DNA analysis as well as other issues. New areas
that promise exciting developments in the near future include
the identification of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)
in forensic evidence, mathematical and statistical issues, the
analysis of nonhuman DNA evidence, and matters pertaining to
genetic privacy.
Single nucleotide polymorphisms
are common in the human genome and represent another tremendous
source of genetic variation for use by both researchers and the
forensic community. These polymorphisms are not nearly as powerful
individually compared to STRs or to VNTRs, but the sheer number
and potential for automated allele typing make them attractive
candidates for research and development by the forensic community.
Y-chromosome SNPs will certainly be of great use in forensic
testing of mixed-source evidentiary samples. Those involved in
one commercial venture (Affymetrix, Santa Clara, California)
recently announced development of a human SNP array that will
include 1,500 markers covering the entire human genome. Microchip
arrays are but one possible method for typing SNPs, and it will
be important for the forensic community to provide input into
the development of lower-cost technologies if SNPs are to be
widely used for forensic testing.
Several issues of statistical
genetics are relevant in the interpretation of DNA profiling
of evidentiary and known samples. These include consideration
of blood relatives when sample quality permits only partial profiling
of evidentiary samples. Furthermore, mutation-rate assessment
of the STR loci will be most helpful in instances to avoid the
potential for false exclusions. Several sound methods are available
in the interpretations of evidence derived from multiple sources.
These include likelihood ratio analysis as well as probability-of-exclusion
calculations. Software already available in the forensic community
will continue to make validation of local databases possible
in a prompt fashion.
Nonhuman DNA evidence will
become increasingly important in a wide variety of forensic applications.
These include typing for species identification (e.g., animal
poaching, endangered species capture, and illegal hunting and
export) and paternity testing (fraud involving misrepresentation
of kinship relations in breeding of economically important species,
including horses, dogs, and cattle). In addition, dog, cat, and
rare plant DNA profiling will become increasingly important in
cases in which DNA evidence from such species are important evidentiary
clues in the investigation of felony crimes. This will bring
several issues to the attention of the courts, including questions
about novelty and application of laboratory methods such as random
amplified polymorphism detection and amplification fragment length
polymorphism, validation of theories of genetic diversity, and
estimation of match probabilities in nonhuman species, some of
which reproduce asexually. Although none of these matters present
insurmountable challenges, the forensic community will need to
coordinate their efforts in creating animal and plant databases
and in the study of life cycles and breeding patterns of certain
relevant nonhuman species.
Finally, issues of genetic
privacy certainly will continue to arise as the forensic community
deals with different statutory legislation regulating information
transfer between and among jurisdictional boundaries. For example,
situations may arise in which computerized searching of profiles
in a forensic data bank leads to partial hits, suggesting that
the true contributor to an evidentiary sample is a blood relative
of the individual whose profile is lawfully stored. Whether the
policy or statute in each jurisdiction will permit transfer of
such leads back to investigators is but one matter that merits
careful scrutiny by the forensic community.
Each of the previously mentioned
areas represents both challenges and opportunities for modern
forensic scientists. Each will add to the exculpatory and inclusionary
power of forensic DNA typing for thoughtful, deliberate, and
reasoned use in matters of science, law, and public policy.
Back to index
European Community Quality Initiatives
R. K. Bramley
Forensic Science
Service
Birmingham, United Kingdom
In Dr.
Janet Thompson's presentation, she explained the work of
the various working groups and committees within the European
Network of Forensic Science Institutes (ENFSI) and how they have
improved communication and cooperation between the European forensic
science laboratories and law enforcement organizations. However,
it was recognized by ENFSI that each of the working groups was
to some extent plowing its own furrow with little current appreciation
of what the other working groups were doing, and there might
well be some duplication of effort. Last autumn a joint meeting
of ENFSI members and working group chairmen was held in Paris
to share experiences between the working groups, see how they
related to other similar bodies, and look at how the working
groups might relate best to one another and to ENFSI.
This meeting was hugely successful
and led to a realization that all the working groups were in
fact trying to tackle somewhat similar issues with somewhat similar
priorities:
- standardization/harmonization/development
of best practise manuals;
- accreditation;
- proficiency testing/collaborative
exercises;
- databases/reference collections/exchange
of information;
- European Union funding;
and
- education/training.
It was also recognized that
there was an underlying need for support in taking this work
forward so that all the issues would best be approached from
the perspective of quality principles. This led to much discussion
of the role of the Quality Assurance Working Group and its relationship
with the other working groups. In the end, it was concluded that
it should have an underpinning role of supporting the other working
groups and providing a framework of quality policies and principles
to help them to develop best practise in line with international
quality standards.
Quality Assurance Working Group
The Quality Assurance Working
Group was inaugurated in 1996 at a meeting in Rijswijk in The
Netherlands. It has a board of six members, drawn mainly from
northwestern Europe and a total of 41 representatives from 23
different countries. The full Quality Assurance Working Group
has met only twice to date, but the board has met four times,
and it is the board that makes the major contribution in developing
proposals and policies.
This method of operation
is a little different from that of the other working groups,
where the whole body of the membership tends to be involved in
everything. But there are reasons for this. These lie largely
in the wide gulf that exists in the formal adoption of the broader
principles of quality assurance throughout Europe. As a rough
generalization, those in the northwest are quite well advanced
in working to recognized international quality standards, but
those in southern Europe and particularly the emergent nations
of eastern Europe have not yet embraced them to the same extent
for a range of different reasons. But the growing number of member
countries in our working group clearly indicates a desire from
everyone throughout Europe to find out more about what is involved
and how they can move forward.
Aim and Achievements of
the Quality Assurance Working Group
The aim of the Quality Assurance
Working Group is to promote quality in forensic science by providing
information and advice on standards, accreditation schemes, training,
and education to achieve competence and the principles to be
followed for the quality management of reference materials, data
banks, proficiency tests, and the interpretation of evidence.
During the first two years,
we provided advice on standards when requested, but we concentrated
on promoting laboratory accreditation and developing a number
of specific quality management policies. Since the meeting last
autumn in Paris, we have also begun to think about the design
of best practise manuals.
Accreditation of Laboratories
The ENFSI board recognized
at an early stage the benefits to be obtained from formal accreditation
of laboratories to international standards and requested the
Quality Assurance Working Group to develop a policy statement
for ENFSI that would encourage laboratories to move along this
path. The statement we developed, which has now been endorsed
by ENFSI, is as follows:
The ENFSI board wishes to
promote consistent and reliable evidence through the whole forensic
process, from scene of incident to court. As one part of this
aim, it is the policy of the ENFSI board that all member laboratories
should have achieved, or should be taking steps towards, ISO
Guide 25 compliant accreditation (e.g., EN 45001) for their laboratory
testing activities.
In determining this policy
the board accepts that progress will be slower in some countries
than others for a number of reasons including differences in
national accreditation systems and differences in the operation
of legal systems.
Where ISO Guide 25 compliant
accreditation cannot be achieved, the board encourages the use
of other quality management standards with broadly equivalent
objectives.
However, it is one thing
gaining commitment to a principle and another seeing action being
implemented. The Quality Assurance Working Group Board also decided
on a strategy for promoting the move towards accreditation. This
initially involved trying to raise the awareness of the requirements
of the international standards such as ISO
9000 and EN 45001 among member laboratories and making contact
with all the laboratories and their national accreditation bodies
(each country has its own, and few have any experience of accrediting
forensic science laboratories) to make them aware of the existence
of each other. We have also encouraged the other working groups
to be represented on our working group. We devoted the Quality
Assurance Working Group meeting we held in Birmingham in March
this year wholly to the theme of accreditation, and we have also
recently conducted a survey of member laboratories to identify
what their plans are in terms of going for accreditation and
where the Quality Assurance Working Group might be able to assist.
We have been helped considerably
in raising the profile of international standards by the imminent
conversion of ISO Guide 25 to a new standard, ISO 17025, and
the opportunity provided to involve everyone in assisting the
International
Laboratory Accreditation Co-operation (ILAC) working group
develop new international guidelines to assist in the interpretation
of ISO 17025 for forensic science laboratories.
Quality Management Policies
Two quality management policies
have been developed by the Quality Assurance Working Group Board
during the last year and exposed for comment to the Quality Assurance
Working Group and the joint meeting of Working Group Chairmen
and ENFSI members in Paris. These were
- Guidance on the Conduct
of Proficiency Tests and Collaborative Exercises and
- Guidance on the Management
of Reference Materials and Databases.
The former is based on the
requirements of ISO Guide 43, the nascent associated ILAC guidelines,
and the practical experience of our board. Its principles have
been endorsed by the meetings, but again it has been agreed that
the pace of its implementation should be a matter for individual
laboratories and working groups, depending on their other priorities.
It is pleasing to see that the principles also have been adopted
recently by SWGMAT.
The second policy on reference
materials and databases has been adopted similarly by ENFSI and
is serving as a useful guide to individual working groups in
their work.
The Quality Assurance Working
Group Board has also produced Guidelines for the Workplace Assessment
of Competence. This document was shared with our working group
and the joint meeting in Paris and will now be offered to the
Education and Training Committee for consideration. These guidelines
are based on a great deal of work, which I shall refer to briefly
later, that has been done in this area during the last few years
in the United Kingdom.
Best Practise Manuals
The top priority for all
the ENFSI working groups at present is the development of best
practise manuals with a view to achieving more standardization
or harmonization of approach.
We have begun only recently
to give serious thought to how we might be able to support this
best, but we have concluded already that there cannot be any
such thing as absolute best practise. Rather, we see best practise
as the means by which the optimum outcome can be achieved for
a particular requirement under a given set of circumstances.
It depends on the circumstances of the offense, the questions
that need to be addressed, the purpose for which the information
is required, and any specific requirements of the law or criminal
justice system. Best practise guidelines, in our view, only can
aim to establish and maintain working practises that lead to
more consistent methodology, provide results that are comparable,
minimize the risk of error, and provide the desired quality of
information on time and at an acceptable cost. They should be
based clearly on sound quality assurance principles.
Our initial ideas for a framework
within which each working group can develop its own best practise
manual are that it should encompass, from the scene of incident
to the court, all activities within the forensic process; identify
all the relevant quality issues that need to be taken into account;
and refer the working group to sources of information that will
help its deliberations. As such the manuals might have chapters
dealing with
- establishing the requirement;
- case assessment;
- prioritization and sequence
of examinations;
- examination of the scene,
victims, and suspects;
- laboratory examinations;
- laboratory records;
- evaluation and interpretation;
- presentation of evidence;
- quality assurance; and
- health and safety.
Future Work Plan of the
Quality Assurance Working Group
Our priority activities during
the next year will be to
- continue to promote and
facilitate the accreditation of laboratories and to seek funding
from the European Union for this,
- support the work of the
Education and Training Committee, and
- complete the template for
the other working groups to use to develop their own best practise
manuals (which we hope to take forward in discussion with another
meeting of working group chairmen in the autumn).
We will also need to complete
our input into the ILAC document for forensic science laboratories.
Our longer term work plan
includes developing best practise guidelines on the validation
of new methods, accreditation in difficult areas, quality assurance
in research and development, management of computerized laboratories,
case assessment, interpretation issues, and implementation of
total quality management.
Other Quality Initiatives
in the United Kingdom
I conclude by mentioning
some of the local quality initiatives we have been pushing forward
in the United Kingdom. In particular, I introduce the concept
of accreditation or certification of forensic scientists, rather
than their laboratories, systems, and procedures that have dominated
the European agenda to date. It is only when the people and the
systems, procedures, and facilities available to them are properly
under control, I believe, that we can really hope to ensure quality
in our work. I would also like to mention some steps that are
being taken in the United Kingdom to register forensic practitioners
according to their demonstrated scope of competence.
Occupational Standards and
Vocational Qualifications
We have a strongly held view
that it is not sufficient for forensic scientists simply to hold
academic qualifications. What is required is that they have demonstrated
competence in the workplace, whether this be practical bench
work or the assessment, interpretation, and reporting of results.
To demonstrate competence, we first have to have agreed standards
of performance and methods of assessing people against those
standards. Competence may also be lost if it is not practised
or kept up-to-date, so it is important that it is checked at
regular intervals.
We have done a great deal
during the last few years in the forensic science sector in the
United Kingdom to develop standards of performance and assessment
of performance in the workplace. To date we have worked on standards
and the establishment of vocational qualifications based on assessment
against these for
- recovery of material in
the laboratory,
- crime scene investigation,
- crime scene management,
- blood and body fluids,
- questioned documents,
- marks and impressions,
- fingerprints,
- road traffic accidents,
- drugs,
- fire and explosions,
- firearms, and
- trace evidence.
In the Forensic Science Service
we have used the national vocational qualifications-type of approach
very successfully during the past year to bring more than 100
new recruits up to the level where we can confidently employ
them in the role of expert witnesses after only nine months in
the job.
This standards work will
continue, and the wider aspects of training for forensic scientists
will also be developed under the auspices of the new Forensic
Science Sector Committee of our National Training Organization.
This represents the interests of not only scientists in the public
sector laboratories, but also police employees involved in the
collection and examination of physical evidence and scientists
working in private organizations and for the defense as well.
Registration of Forensic
Practitioners
The ideal of all forensic
practitioners being assessed as to their competence is also forming
the basis for a national Register of Forensic Practitioners.
The idea of establishing
a body that would lay down and implement consistently high standards
of competence and integrity in forensic science has its roots
in a number of prominent miscarriages of justice that occurred
in the United Kingdom in the 1970s. This gave rise to considerable
public concern in the late 1980s when the guilty verdicts were
overturned by the Court of Appeal. This, in turn, led to a Report
on Forensic Science by the House of Lords Select Committee on
Science and Technology in 1993, which recommended the creation
of an Advisory Board and a Register for Forensic Scientists,
and a further report by the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice
in 1993, which recommended the creation of a Forensic Science
Advisory Council. In 1996, there was a serious contamination
incident in a terrorist explosives case, and yet a third report
was produced, this time recommending an Inspectorate of Forensic
Science Services or, again, registration.
Notwithstanding all this,
the government did not introduce statutory regulation of forensic
science. The government recognized that most of the problems
occurred a considerable time ago, and since then, the law on
disclosure led to much more open appreciation of scientific evidence.
Also, the forensic science community itself took very significant
steps to improve the quality of its work through accreditation
of its laboratories to international standards and the introduction
of national vocational qualifications for its people.
A system of voluntary self-regulation
therefore was seen as the best way forward and, following an
initiative within the forensic science community led by Dr. Thompson,
the Chief Executive of the Forensic Science Service, a working
group was established under an eminent scientist, Lord Lewis,
to advise on how best to establish this. This recommended the
formation of a Registration Council.
The process of setting up
this Registration Council for Forensic Practitioners is now moving
apace. It will be a company limited by guarantee, possibly registered
as a charity, and will comprise a council of practitioners, other
stakeholders, lay representatives, an executive board tasked
with the running the organization, and a number of assessment
panels.
The founding principles of
the register are that it will
- cover the whole forensic
process, from the scene of incident to the court;
- encompass the whole of the
United Kingdom;
- be independent and eventually
self-financing through registration fees; and
- set consistently high standards
of competence, practise, and discipline in which the users of
forensic science and the public could have confidence.
It will thus not be an assessment
body itself but will require evidence of competence to be provided
by potential registrants. This evidence could well be derived
from the building blocks already in place, like the national
vocational qualifications for professional knowledge and practical
skills, the Forensic Science Society Diplomas, and academic qualifications
for other knowledge-based requirements, suitably augmented where
gaps or deficiencies are identified. Evidence of continuing professional
competence will have to be shown, probably every three to four
years, for reregistration.
The council is pushing forward
in a number of discrete areas initially—fingerprints, document
examination, and DNA—while developing a clear code of practise
and discipline arrangements based on this code, which is essential
if registration is to have any teeth. It is anticipated that
the first registrations will be made within the year.
Summary
I have attempted to explain
the way in which the working groups in ENFSI are developing and,
in particular, the underpinning role of quality and the Quality
Assurance Working Group. I have also introduced the steps we
are taking in the United Kingdom to ensure that practitioners
of forensic science are up to the mark. I think there is a great
deal we can learn from one another in both these areas.
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FORENSIC SCIENCE COMMUNICATIONS JULY 1999 VOLUME
1 NUMBER 2 |
