Crime Laboratory Accreditation

Even isolated instances of injustice and incompetence are troublesome. But stories are rarely, if ever, told about the progress that has been made, and continues to be made, as a result of crime laboratory accreditation.

The purpose of this page is to explain the truth about the accreditation process and why it is so important for our justice system.

Background
During the mid 1970’s, a voluntary proficiency testing study was commenced by the Forensic Science Foundation with support from the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA). This study revealed disturbing results regarding the reliability of work performed in some of America’s crime laboratories, which quickly made national headlines.

At the time, the newly formed American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors chose to address the problem by creating a series of professional and scientific standards to which laboratories could voluntarily conform and thereby earn the confidence of the communities and justice systems they serve. This monumental task was assigned to a committee aptly named the Laboratory Accreditation Board. With the formation of this committee, forensic science accreditation was born.

The first laboratory system accredited under the new standards was the Illinois State Police in May of 1982. The program quickly expanded as hundreds of crime laboratories applied for and earned laboratory accreditation in the coming years.

On February 4, 1988, the laboratory accreditation board was formally incorporated as an independent and self-governing non-profit entity in the state of Missouri. Despite this formal split from the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors, the board retained its original name, American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors – Laboratory Accreditation Board, or ASCLD/LAB (pronounced azz’clad-lab’).

The ASCLD/LAB legacy program is a rigorous program that served the forensic science community very well in its first 20+ years. However, several high profile criminal cases in the 1990s, such as the O.J. Simpson murder trial in California and the William Kennedy Smith rape trial in Florida propelled the forensic sciences back into the news. ASCLD/LAB recognized that the legitimacy of its accreditation program could not be sustained unless it was subjected to international scrutiny by professionals both inside and outside of the field of forensic science.

ISO - The International Stamp of Approval
ISO is the Greek word meaning “equal”, and it is the name used by the Geneva based federation known as the International Organization of Standardization. Founded in 1946, ISO promotes the development of international standards to facilitate the production and exchange of goods and services worldwide. In the early 1990s, ISO was a key player in enhancing the economic viability of the newly formed European Economic Community by creating standards that would allow the European nations to exchange goods and services more efficiently and cost-effectively.

ISO consists of over ninety member nations, each with voting privileges. Member nations work together to create various professional standards through technical committees. The U.S. representative to ISO is the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). The ISO standard pertaining to testing and calibration laboratories is the ISO 17025 standard.

ISO AND ASCLD/LAB
ASCLD/LAB developed its international program of accreditation in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This new International program would be different from the original Legacy program in that it would be built around the ISO 17025 document. But in order to create a rigorous and useful accreditation program using the 17025 document (17025 is not exclusive to forensic science), ASCLD-LAB drafted its Supplemental Requirements, which are recognized by ISO as an extensive and customized set of forensic science standards that “amplify” the accreditation program beyond the scope of the 17025 document, making it better suited to assess the strength of forensic science laboratories.

In this arrangement, ASCLD/LAB, the well-established scrutinizer of forensic science laboratories, now had to subject itself and its new program to international scrutiny. By doing so, ASCLD/LAB became an ISO certified accreditation body with the authority to assess forensic science laboratories for conformance to the ISO 17025 standard in addition to its own Supplemental Requirements. In other words, the accreditor became the accredited.

ABOUT THE PROCESS
The process begins with a laboratory applying for accreditation under the international program (the Legacy Program is due to expire in the coming years). By this time, the laboratory has done everything it can to demonstrate conformance to the ISO 17025 standard as well as the ASCLD/LAB Supplemental Requirements, which "amplify" the ISO 17025 standard to more effectively address the numerous operational demands of a forensic science laboratory.

A specially trained lead assessor is randomly appointed to manage the project and select the team of assessors who are also trained specifically for the international program.

During the next few months, the lead assessor works closely with the applicant-laboratory director to review all available documentation and records that demonstrate conformance to the ISO 17025 and Supplemental Standards. This process is exhaustive and time consuming. The lead assessor is likely to request additional materials while the laboratory director fine-tunes his/her laboratory’s quality management system. Herein lies the value of accreditation; it forces the laboratory to continually review and monitor its systems and processes so that potential problems are allowed to reveal themselves before they become serious.

Once the off-site portion of the assessment is completed, the assessment team is dispatched to the applicant-laboratory where they will conduct the on-site assessment. The team may spend several days auditing the laboratory’s management, technical operations, health & safety system, and so forth. The process is difficult and draining for the laboratory staff as assessors dig deeply and indiscriminately into every conceivable part of the laboratory’s operations. By the time the assessment is over, both the assessors and laboratory staff-members are exhausted.

Once the assessment is completed, the laboratory is given time to remediate any outstanding issues that were uncovered. These remedies must sufficiently demonstrate the laboratory's success in correcting any substandard practices or procedures that were revealed during the assessment.