'Graveyard spiral': MPs warn of crisis in forensic science

Forensic science is in a "graveyard spiral", according to a parliamentary inquiry that has warned of biased criminal investigations, a rising risk of wrongful convictions, and murder and sexual offence cases collapsing due to missing evidence.

- Hannah Devlin

The three-year inquiry set up by the all-party parliamentary group on miscarriages of justice found "reckless policy decisions" over the past decade had brought forensic science to a point of crisis. A near-monopoly in the commercial sector meant there was now a dangerous single point of failure and increasing reliance on in-house police laboratories risked compromising scientific impartiality, the inquiry found.

Prof Angela Gallop, a co-chair of the Westminster Commission on Forensic Science, said: "Forensic science in England and Wales as currently configured isn't working for anyone - not for the police, not for the lawyers or for the courts, not for the scientists themselves, and not for the general public who get caught up in the criminal justice system.

"Like a plane hurtling downwards in what has become known as a graveyard spiral, with the pilot in desperation making increasingly erratic decisions, it can only be a short time now before it impacts the ground."

Since the closure of the Forensic Science Service in 2012, work has been divided between commercial providers and, increasingly, in-house police laboratories. The inquiry said there were now real concerns about bias due to the expanding types of investigations the police conduct, paired with inadequate legal aid funding for defence experts.

The report recommends an immediate halt to the expansion of police in-house forensic provision and, in the long term, removing forensic science provision from police oversight.