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Should States Charge for Forensic Services?

May 21, 2008 by Crime Lab Report

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According to a report released last month, many states are experiencing budget problems. “The current health of state budgets is very uneven,” noted William T. Pound, executive director of the National Conference of State Legislatures. “For energy-producing states, the fiscal situation is strong and the outlook is good. But that situation is in stark contrast to states where the housing sector slump has been particularly severe or other fiscal challenges have prevailed.”

As more and more states prepare for serious shortfalls in expected revenues for the current and upcoming fiscal years, bureaucrats will have to make some tough decisions on where to cut spending and/or offset operating costs.

Invariably, cutbacks seem to always weigh heavy on publicly funded crime laboratories despite their critical importance in helping to ensure public safety.  And as budget conditions worsen, some states resort to drastic measures only to learn that their crime laboratories are more valuable than they thought.

In 2003, for example, the state of Oregon laid off over half of its forensic staff.  They quickly discovered the serious mistake they had made and rehired scientists to correct the problems that were created. 

Similarly, in 2007, the Michigan legislature, with the support and approval of the governor, vowed to close two of their crime labs – one in Marquette and the other in Sterling Heights, a suburb of Detroit.  Enraged public safety officials led a valiant and successful fight to keep the labs open.

Crime Lab Report is concerned that some states may try to shift the financial burden of providing quality forensic services to the agencies that use them. Fortunately, many states already have laws in place to mandate that the state provide these services at no cost to their criminal justice communities.

In 1988, however, the state of Mississippi statutorily imposed a fee on users of the forensic services provided by the state. At the time, it was believed that those who utilized the services should pay for them.

Ken Winter, former director of the Mississippi State Crime Lab and now the executive director of the Mississippi Association of Chiefs of Police, told Crime Lab Report that “it was not a well thought through idea. Our association has been working for the last two years to repeal the law, simply because it is not feasible.” The statute reads as follows:

The Commissioner of Public Safety shall establish and the Division of Support Services of the Department of Public Safety shall collect for services rendered proper fees commensurate with the services rendered by the crime laboratory. Those fees shall be deposited into a special fund in the State Treasury to the credit of the crime laboratory and expended in accordance with applicable rules and regulations of the Department of Finance and Administration. Those fees may be used for any authorized expenditure of the crime laboratory except expenditures for salaries, wages and fringe benefits.

In most laboratories, employee salaries constitute the majority of the agency’s budget, so the fees imposed would only support a small part of the overall operating budget. In a 2004 study conducted by the Joint Legislative Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review, the Mississippi Legislature was told that the laboratory was not imposing fees that were appropriate for the analyses conducted. The lab was only charging a flat $50 fee for each case and $100 for each DNA sample. Even with these small fees, agencies were over $500,000.00 in arrears on their payments. Compounding the problem was the inability of the lab to take legal action to collect the fees.  In total, the fees charged by the laboratory only account for approximately 18% of its budget.

Interestingly, a survey conducted last year by William Marbaker, Assistant Director of the Missouri State Highway Patrol Crime Lab and former President of the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors, concluded that Mississippi was the only state that imposed a fee for forensic services.

Crime Lab Report hopes that the reason Mississippi stands alone is because the other 49 states have already determined it’s a bad idea.  *****
 

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