Quality
Assurance and Risk Management
Few
events shake confidence in the criminal justice system as much as the
discovery of deficiencies leading to a miscarriage of justice. A series
of collapsed convictions in 1991 and 1992 provoked new thinking about
quality assurance and risk management.
The forensic community, to its credit, did not deny the problem but
addressed it head on. The Council for the Registration of Forensic Practitioners
emerged with its founders determined to show that the forensic professions
could set high standards and police them effectively.
CRFP was established in 1999 with the explicit objective of promoting
public confidence in forensic practice in the UK. Its main function
is to draw up and police a register of currently competent forensic
practitioners.
The register opened in October 2000 to the most obvious specialties
in mainstream forensic practice. The register has steadily extended
to cover some 25 specialties, representing most of the key players in
the investigation of an incident from the scene to the courtroom. In
chronological order they are:
* laboratory science (drugs, firearms, human contact traces, incident
reconstruction, marks, particulates, questioned documents, toxicology)
* scene examination
* fingerprint examination
* odontology (dentistry)
* anthropology
* volume crime scene examination
* fingerprint development, archaeology
* road transport, covering collision investigation and vehicle examination
forensic medical examination (forensic medical examiners were formerly
known as police surgeons)
* paediatrics
* veterinary science
* fire scene examination
* and, most recently, three digital specialties - computing, imaging
and telecoms.
Of the nearly 3000 applicants approximately 2250 have been registered;
about 500 applications are in the assessment process. Around 130 applications
have not been concluded successfully, usually because the applicant
has withdrawn, to work towards a fuller caselog, or because of a change
in circumstances.
Registration begins with the applicants being asked to submit a form
listing contact details, qualifications and experience, to make declarations
about their past record and willingness to adhere to CRFP's Code of
Conduct and to submit two references about their professional performance.
The distinguishing feature of the assessment process is its focus on
recent casework; a CRFP assessor, a practitioner working in the same
specialty, chooses a few cases for detailed scrutiny against competence
criteria agreed with the profession.
The lead assessors provide a quality control mechanism and beyond them
a team of process verifiers make random checks across all the specialties.
The form takes about two hours to complete and the preparation of casework
for an assessor a similar period. The target period for the whole process
is 16 weeks.
CRFP ensures ongoing competence by requiring registrants to submit an
annual return listing any developments in their workload, including
recent training and unusual cases.
Every four years they are required to revalidate. Revalidation takes
the form of another assessment of case-work, similar but not as extensive
as when they first applied. A registrant failing to revalidate successfully
will lose their registration.
The robust accreditation of current competence embodied in the CRFP
scheme has been recognised in public endorsements from the Prime Minister;
the Lord Chancellor, to whom CRFP is formally accountable; the Attorney
General; the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Parliamentary under
Secretary of State at the Home Office
Increasingly the court system and the judiciary, as well as the public,
are using the register as a ready check on the competence of experts
in the specialties to which the register is open.
Police forces are asking about the registration credentials of professionals
with whose services they are thinking of contracting.
Although the CRFP registration system is voluntary, and it will continue
to be open to the courts to hear evidence from any witness, those forensic
practitioners who work in registrable specialties will increasingly
be asked to give a reason why they are not registered with CRFP.
So registration in not only about creating confidence in legal and court
matters, but also the self-confidence of practitioners generated by
knowing that they have recently been assessed by a peer as competent
in their specialty.
Can
we put this in a separate tinted box?What next for the Council of Registered
Forensic Practitioners?
CRFP will be holding its first stakeholder conference, on the theme
Forensic Evidence: Guilty or Innocent, at the Warwick Conference Park
from Wednesday 6- Thursday 7 September 2006. The conference will focus
on issues of professional standards and quality. The conference will
be of interest to all those working in police and forensic science establishments,
forensic providers, users and training organisations, professional institutions,
legal firms and the judiciary.
CRFP's first Annual Review, focusing on the year 2005/06, and the new
website, will be launched at the conference.
The following specialties are on course for admission to the register:
* podiatry, which focuses on issues round the functioning foot, including
footprint/footwear identification, gait analysis and general podiatric/
record card assessment. The register will open to forensic podiatry
on 1 October 2006;
* nursing and allied professions, which deal with general forensic work,
sexual offence examination and mental health;
* natural science, encompassing earth science (geology, etc), entomology,
environmental management, hydrology, meteorology and plant science.
A road show round the judicial regions, building on a pilot in the north
west region in 2004, will kick off with presentations to the CPS, local
solicitors and barristers, local judges and coroners and senior police
managers in Manchester on 12 October 2006.
CRFP will also be facilitating ground-breaking seminars on the nature
of forensic expert opinion, and the criteria that such an opinion should
satisfy before being admitted in court.
For more information
Further information is available from the CRFP office on email info@crfp.org
and on the website www.crfp.org.uk.
If you would like a copy of our first Annual Review when it is published
on 6 September, just let us know