Delays Over DNA Evidence ‘Allowing Criminals To Commit More Crime’
Police investigations are being hampered by outdated forensic science facilities, leaving detectives facing long delays to obtain crucial evidence. The Scotsman has learned that a chronic shortage of modern laboratories and cutting-edge equipment means Scotland’s police are having to wait weeks before DNA can be extracted from weapons, blood stains and other evidence.
Forensic scientists warn that criminals will continue to go undetected for long periods, unless ministers invest millions of pounds in new facilities.
Gordon Thomson, the business development manager at the Police Forensic Science Laboratory in Dundee, said: “It might take us 20 days to produce DNA profiles. That’s 20 days where the bad guy is potentially out there committing more crime. We want to become much faster at what we do, but that simply isn’t possible at the moment.”
While the likes of England, Estonia, Finland and South Africa invest millions in robots capable of leading police to criminals within hours of a sample being analysed, Scotland’s forensic scientists can take weeks to establish a profile from a crime scene.
Police echo the concerns of experts, saying out-dated equipment is hampering investigations, as criminals go undetected to commit further offences.
Forensic science managers say that the Scottish service, which largely works out of small, 1970s-built converted offices, will fall further behind without improved facilities.
The Dundee laboratory put forward a business plan to the Scottish Executive for a £13.5 million new centre on the outskirts of the city nearly a year ago, but has yet to hear whether funding will be granted.
Scotland’s biggest forensic science laboratory, in Glasgow, is also pressing for new accommodation. The two centres are responsible for DNA analysis on more than 90 per cent of all materials recovered from crime scenes.
In Dundee alone, the number of productions sent to the laboratory for DNA analysis in 2003-4 topped 14,000 – more than double the number in 1998-99.
DNA technology is becoming an increasingly important method of solving all sorts of crime, from murders to shoplifting. Last year, 1,700 cases were solved in Strathclyde alone thanks to DNA. But forensic science bosses say more could be done if the most up-to-date facilities were in place.
“There is a forensic science lab in South Africa where complete lines of work are fully-automated. They can do 828 DNA samples each day. It would take us 24 days to analyse that number of samples. We are falling behind not just South Africa, but other countries like Sweden, Finland, Estonia and England, who are all embracing completely robotic processes.
“The benefits of such technologies are immense. They can work around the clock, they don’t get tired and they almost eliminate the chance of human contamination.”
Jim Dunlop, head of biology at the Dundee laboratory, said: “The technology is now available to get perfectly adequate DNA profiles from lesser and lesser amounts of DNA – what is sometimes known as ‘invisible’ DNA. That’s the reality. The downside is that you need to be working in an optimum environment, which simply doesn’t exist here.”
A senior police source said: “We want the most efficient forensic service so we can do the best job we can to investigate crime. But, at the moment, we don’t have that. Forensic science has advanced so much in the last 25 years, but the fact is it’s outgrown the facilities we have in Scotland.”
Scotland has two other police forensic science laboratories, in Aberdeen and Edinburgh. They are currently managed by local police forces, but will be brought under a single organisation from next April.
Ministers are currently considering whether to give the go-ahead for a “crime campus”, which would house Scotland’s leading law enforcement agencies, at Gartcosh, possibly including Scotland’s unified forensic science service.
A spokesman for the Scottish Executive said £3.8 million had been given to police to spend on DNA equipment in the past five years.
“We believe that forensic support for the police in Scotland is excellent, but that we will need to continue investing in it to keep it that way.
“We worked closely with the Tayside Police to prepare the business case for a new laboratory in Tayside, including offering funding for consultants.
“The report was submitted in November 2005 and is being considered alongside other proposals for capital investment, including the Gartcosh project.”
21st-century expertise in a 1970 timewarp
IN A laboratory converted from a lacklustre 1970s office, a scientist sits hunched over her microscope, examining a white training shoe, scouring for any unusual marks and stains that could yield vital evidence.
Another forensic expert prepares to cast his eye over a fragment of paper, which he carefully removes from a plastic envelope.
These mini-labs represent the nerve centre of Scotland’s second biggest police forensic laboratory, which is also home to the national DNA database.
The biologists, chemists and fingerprint experts are confined to their own detached converted offices. One team is working in what used to be the police bar. The office of a senior manager was once a shower room.
When scientists want to carry out more than one test on an item – perhaps a piece of clothing taken from a rape victim, or a knife found near the scene of a stabbing – it has to be carried along a corridor from one room to the next.
At the end of one such corridor is a large storeroom where hundreds of packages of all shapes and sizes are stacked, wrapped, bagged and catalogued.
There are no air-locks between each room, so even slight differences in air pressure can cause cross-contamination. Precautions are taken to minimise the risk of such contamination. Items are carefully wrapped, staff are decked out in protective clothing, doors, walls and work surfaces are cleaned to the highest standards.
Inside a third room is a large, unremarkable looking grey box with the name “Flunky” on the side, the Scottish police forensic service’s first, and so far only, bio-robot.
