Crime Laboratories

A crime laboratory, according to the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors (ASCLD), is “a laboratory (with at least one full-time scientist) which examines physical evidence in criminal matters and provides opinion testimony with respect to such physical evidence in a court of law” (ASCLD, 1997, p. 1). With the exception of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and some other federal labs, crime labs in the United States developed independently of one another, in a generally haphazard manner, in response to local perceived needs. In the absence of any centralized leadership, the provision of forensic science services to individual police departments evolved in a number of different ways.

During the latter half of the 19th century, there was relatively little reliance on physical evidence in crime solving. Document examination from the 1840s, blood stain analysis from the 1870s, firearm and bullet examination from the 1880s, photography, and microscopy were occasionally, but not routinely, used in criminal investigation. Up until the 1920s, services in these areas were generally supplied by consultants who had acquired their expertise in the course of their nonforensic occupations. One notable consultancy job was carried out by employees of the Springfield Armory in 1907, who provided ballistics evidence in the Brownsville affray. Some private laboratories provided expertise in firearms and document examination, such as those in Seattle, Washington (from 1919); New York City (1923); and Berkeley, California (1919).

The first police crime laboratory was set up in 1924 in Los Angeles, by the LA police chief and noted police reformer August Vollmer. This lab was typical of the early crime labs, being essentially a one-man operation. Unusually, the director had academic training, in biology. A chemist was added in 1929. Vollmer had previously run the Berkeley Police Department, where he had persuaded faculty at the nearby University of California to give classes to officers on the use of physical evidence. In 1916, Vollmer recruited a university microscopist to be the first criminalist at the Berkeley Police Department.

Many labs evolved out of the police identification bureaus. These bureaus generally used the Bertillon systems for identifying people, and from 1904 on, fingerprinting. During the Sacco and Vanzetti case (1920–1927), four firearms experts gave conflicting testimony, dramatically and publicly demonstrating the need for consistent and reliable firearms identification. The responsibility for firearms examinations was generally added to police identification bureaus, and the resulting units renamed as laboratories. These laboratories were usually staffed by self-taught officers with little or no formal training in science.

The firearms testimony of Calvin Goddard during the Sacco and Venzetti case attracted patrons who financed both his tour of European crime labs in 1929 and his subsequent establishment of a crime lab in 1930. This lab, named the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory, was affiliated with Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. By 1932, it employed 14 full-time staff and provided forensic services to nearby police departments, including Chicago. The lab published a journal, the American Journal of Police Science, and gave 4-week courses on physical evidence. Some of the graduates of this course brought it into disrepute when they claimed far greater expertise than such a short, superficial course could possibly have provided. Private funding dried up during the Depression, and a much reduced lab was sold to the Chicago Police Department in 1938.

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