March 18, 2009 by Crime Lab Report

Communities across the United States have suffered enough.  So many Americans who played by the rules, built up their savings, and trusted their government institutions to protect them from corruption, greed, and incompetence have endured historic losses resulting from the dramatic decline in our financial markets. 

So policy makers beware.  Concerned citizens are not in the mood to watch their safety and physical security being flushed down the same drain as their hard earned money.  Forensic science is critical to public safety and must be sheltered from ideological wrangling and bureaucratic red tape. 

A month has now passed since the release of the long-awaited report by the National Academy of Sciences titled Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward.  Because its publication came at a time when the nation’s attention is focused on economic hardships, many people did not take notice of the report calling for a new federal agency to regulate the forensic sciences and allocate funding to address specific needs in the forensic community.   

This should come as no surprise.  Despite public fascination with forensic science dramas, most people remain uninterested in the activities of real-life forensic scientists until a friend or loved one dies for unknown reasons or becomes the victim of a violent crime. Until such horrific circumstances befall them, they are unlikely to appreciate how slowly the wheels of justice can turn, especially when overworked crime labs are unable to process cases in a reasonable period of time.  Even in routine death investigations when foul play has been ruled out, it can take months for basic forensic results to come in, which delays the issuance of death certificates and the payment of insurance benefits.   

At a time in our history when Americans have lost so much of their own treasure and are reevaluating the things that are most important to them, they will have minimal tolerance for governmental ineptitude that threatens the health and safety of their families. 

And they have good reason.  We are now learning that governmental ineptitude played an alarming role in the economic troubles we are facing today.    

For example, psychopathic financiers like Bernard Madoff, who perpetrated the largest financial fraud in world history, are not supposed to exist.  Powerful federal oversight is in place to stop these schemes in their tracks and discourage the most twisted Wall Street executives from even thinking about cheating honest investors out of their financial futures. 

“The mission of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation,” according to the SEC website.  “As more and more first-time investors turn to the markets to help secure their futures, pay for homes, and send children to college, our investor protection mission is more compelling than ever.” 

Yet it is gross incompetence and possibly corruption at the SEC that are now being blamed for allowing the Madoff scandal to survive as long as it did.  And the message it should send to the forensic science community and its stakeholders about the dangers of relying on a government bureaucracy is compelling. 

According to a 60 Minutes report aired by CBS on March 1, 2009, the SEC had been warned about Madoff’s activities on five separate occasions beginning in May of 2000.  An obscure financial analyst in Boston named Harry Markopolos said it took him only five minutes to figure out what Madoff was up to – and another four hours to mathematically prove it.   

But it would take him eight years to get the SEC bureaucracy to budge.  And when Madoff finally turned himself in to authorities, the SEC had not yet even begun an investigation. 

“That's typically how the SEC does it,” Markopolos said. “They come in after the crime has been committed, they toe-tag the victims, count the bodies, and try to figure out who the crooks were after the fact, which does none of us any good. 

Sound familiar?  To many professionals in the forensic sciences it certainly should.   

For years, forensic science has been impugned by a network of post-conviction legal activists who are resistant to acknowledging the preventative benefits that forensic science accreditation has provided over the last twenty-five years.  In fact, the vast majority of wrongful convictions that they mistakenly claim were attributable to bad forensic science occurred well before forensic science accreditation matured to what it has now become.   

But to admit just how powerful and effective accreditation is for preventing forensic science malpractice would weaken any argument calling for governmental oversight.  Instead, the focus of these activists remains misdirected towards reactive policies that simply address failures once they have already occurred.   

Even in the Madoff case, it was ultimately competition, not regulation, that exposed the massive Ponzi scheme that bilked investors out of nearly $50 billion.  Markopolos was working as an analyst at a Boston investment firm when his boss asked him to research Madoff’s operation and determine what would have to be done to compete with the consistently high returns that Madoff’s clients were enjoying. 

Government failed.  Industry self-regulation won - and would have put a stop to the scandal eight years sooner if the SEC had listened to Markopolos’ urgings. 

We understand that forensic science and finance are two very different industries.  But the potential damage that can be inflicted by relying unnecessarily on government oversight is similar.

See 'Congress' on the right
 

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