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Affiliation
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Program Coordinator, Forensic Studies & Justice Program, University of South Florida, St Petersburg, FL, USA. |
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Abstract
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The vast majority of forensic service providers are governmental and operate in a political environment. Politics can, for better or worse, overrule science when it comes to operational decisions (policy, financial, perceptual). Therefore, forensic service providers may be subject to adverse outcomes because of political decisions.
As agents of the state, governmental forensic service providers are dependent on their jurisdictional clients (police, prosecutors) for their raison d’être. In this context, dependence means that one entity (the dominant one) can expand and be (more or less) self-sustaining while others (the dependent ones) can do this only as a reflection of that expansion. This subsidiary expansion can have a positive or negative outcome for the dependent entity. Dependence means an asymmetrical power relationship between the two, with the subordinate entity having little or no ability to grow, change, or expand; without significant change, the subordinate is relegated to economic and political dependence [1]. “In essence, if the rules of the game are biased against you, then you have two choices: to continue to play by the rules and thus continue to be exploited or to rewrite the rules in a way that does not leave you at an unfair disadvantage” [2]; page 330).
Suggestions to rewrite the rules came in the form of the National Academy of Sciences' recommendation in 2009 that forensic service providers be administratively or financially independent of law enforcement-based parent agencies ...
Language: en |