Overview
Pursuant to the March 2024 Joint Explanatory Statement for the Commerce, Science, Justice, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, the National Institute of Justice, in collaboration with its Forensic Technology Center of Excellence (FTCOE), is working towards an operational needs assessment on projected workload, backlog, personnel, workforce, resources, necessary turnaround times for law enforcement officers and officers of the court, and equipment needs of forensic science providers and forensic medical service providers. This upcoming report will be subsequent to the 2019 Report to Congress: Needs Assessment of Forensic Laboratories and Medical Examiner/Coroner Offices.
To provide a comprehensive and meaningful needs assessment, we need input across the forensic community to understand challenges forensic science service providers encounter in their daily operations — as well as promising practices to overcome these challenges. We are seeking perspectives from scientists and laboratory leadership, researchers, students, private sector, legal/judicial, and law enforcement, which all rely on the operational performance of forensic science, to understand current operational forensic needs. Please consider sharing some of these perspectives in the following short form—while we are looking for needs that fit within the themes of workforce/personnel, backlog/workload, and resources/equipment, we welcome and consider many different perspectives.
Form will be accepting submissions until Friday, May 16, 2025, at 5:00 pm EST.
The operational needs assessment is an activity supported by the Forensic Technology Center of Excellence (FTCOE). The FTCOE is led by RTI International and supported through a Cooperative Agreement with the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), Office of Justice Programs.
The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this working group are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Contact us at ForensicCOE@rti.org with any questions and subscribe to our newsletter for notifications.
