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41 Med. Sci. & L. 1 (2001)

handle is hein.journals/mdsclw41 and id is 1 raw text is: Editorial: Standards in Evidence 1 Editorial: Standards in Evidence PROFESSOR EVELYN EBSWORTH Chairman of the Council for the Registration of Forensic Practitioners There are few things as likely to bring the criminal justice system into disrepute as the discovery that a forensic practitioner has been incompetent in bringing their findings to court. Recent questions over the objectivity of fin- gerprint evidence, the use and abuse of stored DNA data and their statistical interpretation, and the validity of psychological profiling have led to questions in public about the reliability of forensic evidence and the integrity and com- petence of those who deliver it. This is most serious, particularly at a time when scientific evidence, properly used, has an immense po- tential to support the fair and effective administration of justice. EXPERTISE IN THE COURTROOM The courts rely on the truth of the evidence they receive from pathologists, police sur- geons, scientists, fingerprint examiners and some 40 or more professions who take such evi- dence to court. In the courtroom there is a natural desire for certainty - a certainty which can rarely, if ever, be guaranteed. The courts and the public understand this. They accept that experts' opinions, for the best of reasons, sometimes differ. But the image of the expert witness as a 'hired gun' can be a difficult one to throw off. The court calls in an expert because it lacks expertise in a particular field. By definition, then, the court is not in the best position to judge who is competent to deliver evidence in that field. So the courts - and, through them, the public - need expert help to make that judgement. That is what the Council for the Registration of Forensic Practitioners (CRFP) has been set up to give. WHAT IS THE CRFP? The CRFP is a new, independent regulatory body. Its objective is to promote public confi- dence in forensic practice in the UK. We will achieve this by: * publishing a register of competent forensic practitioners; * ensuring through periodic revalidation that forensic practitioners keep up to date and maintain competence; and * dealing with registered practitioners who fail to meet the necessary standards. There is no doubt that the high profile miscar- riages of justice in the 1970s aroused serious public concern: the quality of justice was per- ceived to be at stake. The public saw the in- creasingly important role science was playing in the courtroom - a role that has expanded significantly since that time. The forensic com- munity, to its credit, acknowledged the need to assure quality and much work was done to se- cure appropriate standards in the way forensic science is delivered. The accreditation of individual practitio- ners is the logical next step. CRFP is setting out to do something that appears not to have been tried in this form anywhere else before: the validation, by an assessor external to the practitioner's organization but from within the appropriate field, of the current competence of individual specialists using structured crite- ria, leading to registration for a period of four years, at the end of which revalidation will be required.

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