Criminal Justice, Science and the Marketplace: The Closure of the Forensic Science Service in Perspective
| DOI | 10.1350/jcla.2013.77.1.818 |
| Published date | 01 February 2013 |
| Author | Tim J. Wilson,Angela M. C. Gallop |
| Date | 01 February 2013 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Criminal Justice, Science and the
Marketplace: The Closure of the
Forensic Science Service in
Perspective
Tim J. Wilson* and Angela M. C. Gallop†
Abstract Despite hesitant beginnings the Forensic Science Service (FSS)
prospered institutionally, as the dominant supplier of forensic science
services to the police, after the introduction of neoliberal policies. This
ended when the FSS overreached itself and the intensification of neo-
liberal policies created an incongruity between its organisational ob-
jectives and those of its clients. The fortunes of UK forensic science and the
FSS diverged long before its closure. Academic and learned society evid-
ence to a Select Committee inquiry into this event, and the influence that
this had on the Committee’s report, illustrates this change. This expert
testimony also explains the importance of the normative, epistemic and
professional aspirations of criminal justice practitioners for ensuring the
value of forensic science to criminal justice. We argue that the risks
threatening scientific evidence, particularly recurrent problems of under-
funding and unequal access for the defence, may be masked by older
narratives of neoliberalism or too narrow an institutional focus.
Keywords Forensic science; FSS; Marketisation; Neoliberalism;
Privatisation
Internationally the UK government’s decision to close the Forensic
Science Service (FSS)1was presented as the result of failed neoliberal
policies:
[W]e cannot think of any other forensic institution worldwide that has
contributed more to the advancement of the forensic sciences than the FSS.
It is a tragic state of affairs indeed that the UK government is willing to
dismiss its own forensic treasure with negative consequences well beyond
the borders of the United Kingdom . . . The problem originates from an
attempt to invoke a business model for all forensic services, and the failure
was predicted by many of us back in the 1990s, when the UK government
decided to privatize the FSS (as a government-owned company).2
* Professor of Criminal Justice Policy, School of Law, Northumbria University;
e-mail: tim.wilson@northumbria.ac.uk.
† Visiting Professor, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, Northumbria University and
Chief Executive of Axiom International Ltd.; e-mail: angela.gallop@axiom-
international-ltd.com.
The authors wish to thank Dr Christopher Lawless and Professor Phil Thomas
for comments on earlier drafts of this article.
1 Following the closure announcement in December 2010, with the exception of its
case record archive, the FSS had effectively ceased to exist by March 2012.
2 B. Budowle, M. Kayser and A. Sajantila, Editorial, ‘The Demise of the United
Kingdom's Forensic Science Service (FSS): Loss of World-leading Engine of
Innovation and Development in the Forensic Sciences’, Investigative Genetics, 1
February 2011, 2:4, available at www.investigativegenetics.com/content/2/1/4, accessed
13 December 2012.
56 The Journal of Criminal Law (2013) 77 JCL 56–77
doi:10.1350/jcla.2013.77.1.818
Initial reaction focused on a privatisation announcement in 2005 and
the creation of a market for forensic science. The FSS was seen to have
been being fatally outcompeted on ‘lowest cost and highest efficiency’.3
The new-appointed FSS CEO had earlier expressed similar but more
precise concerns. Describing the market as ‘immature, fragile and dys-
functional’, with as its ‘most perverse’ development how its customers,
the police, had become competitors by expanding their in-house scien-
tific services.4Likewise one of the FSS staff trade unions identified the
increase in work undertaken within police laboratories as the ‘major
contributing factor’ for the closure decision.5
The consistency between these accounts suggests a mixture of failed
neoliberal policies and internal public sector rivalries. Such explana-
tions, however, gloss over an important fact: that UK forensic science
continues to set international benchmarks for science in the service of
justice. The most telling example of this came in 2011 with the decisive
scientific contribution (not by the FSS) to the successful prosecutions for
the death of Stephen Lawrence. More routinely, volume DNA analysis
continued to equal or outperform, for example, similar work in the USA
or Germany.6A low incidence of errors is inevitable in any type of
laboratory analysis, but the cause is scrutinised by an external regulator
whose report is made public. Organisational reputation rests on an
effective response, not the Official Secrets Act or claims of commercial
3 N. Morling, Editorial ‘Justice Will Be the Loser’, New Scientist, 8 January 2011, 209
(2796) 5.
4 S. O’Neill, ‘Fears for Criminal Justice as Police Save Money on Forensic Science’,
The Times, 19 July 2010; the reader of this article might have gained an impression
that scientific failures in major miscarriages of justice by the FSS were attributable
to the police laboratories in ‘... the cases of the Birmingham Six, Guildford Four
and Judith Ward ...’ (noticeably absent from the article: the Maguire Seven).
Scientific errors, unlike other grave misdemeanours and omissions in those
investigations, cannot be attributed to the police. See C. Walker and R. Stockdale,
‘Forensic Evidence’ in C. Walker and K. Starmer (eds), Miscarriages of Justice: A
Review of Justice in Error (Blackstone Press: London, 1999) and M. Mansfield,
Memoirs of a Radical Lawyer (Bloomsbury: London, 2009).
5 PCS, Forensic Science Service losses of the government’s own making, 14 December 2010,
available at www.pcs.org.uk/en/news_and_events/news_centre/index.cfm/id/F16FC197-D2,
accessed 13 December 2012. The trade union that had the largest scientific
membership at the FSS, Prospect, however, quoted criticism by the President of
the American Academy of Forensic Sciences of a policy that ‘places profit rather
than fairness and impartiality at the heart of justice ... [via] an untested system’,
and suggested that the FSS’s problems were ‘entirely a consequence of previous
decisions to contract out an essential public service’. See Science and Technology
Committee (HC 2010–12), The Forensic Science Service Volume I: Report, together with
formal minutes, oral and written evidence, Ev66–67, available at www.publications.
parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmsctech/855/855.pdf, accessed 13 December
2012.
6 Fraser described forensic science in the USA as ‘desperately bad’ and said that it
was ‘much better’ in the UK (ibid. at Q93). Green catalogued examples of public
sector laboratory failures and massive DNA typing backlogs in the USA; see
Science and Technology Committee (HC 2010–12), The Forensic Science Service
Volume II: Additional written evidence, w116–117, available at www.publications.
parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmsctech/855/855vw.pdf, accessed 13 December
2012. In Germany the required processing period for the simplest type of DNA
analysis is six weeks, compared with three days in England and Wales; see Science
and Technology Committee, above n. 5 at Q112.
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