Searching for Standards: Federal Efforts Regarding Crime Scene Investigation with Input from Archaeology

Summary

In 2009 the National Research Council released a damning report on the state of forensic science in the United States. The end result has been a six year mission to develop national standards and best practice for the myriad of forensic specialties. Coordinated by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), scientific working groups (SWGs) brought together practitioners, academics, and other stakeholders from around the country to draft documents outlining standard terminology and operating procedures. Despite stalled legislation, a national Forensic Science Standards Board was established in 2013 and it was announced that the SWGs would be dissolved and reformed as the Organization of Scientific Area Committees (OSACs). The aim of the OSACs is to, once-and-for-all, create the standards for their disciplines. While many forensic fields have a well-established history within the SWGs and now OSACs, crime scene investigation has traditionally been overlooked in the quest for standards. Finally, in 2015, over a year after the formation of the OSACs, NIST announced the formation of a CSI OSAC that included two members from the archaeology community. This presentation will provide an update on the progress of the CSI OSAC and the road ahead.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Forensic Archaeology

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15974