Benchmarking Forensic Performance in Australia–Volume Crime

Although police investigations have traditionally been considered a single process that commences with the report of a crime and ends in the arrest of a suspect, the process consists of a number of distinct stages. Each stage is undertaken by a range of general and specialist police officers and scientists. In 2007, the Home Office (UK) released the “Summary Report of the Scientific Work Improvement Model (SWIM) Package.” This report highlighted inefficiencies in the End to End Forensic Identification Process for fingerprints and DNA. The SWIM Report identified that improving the efficiency of each of these specific phases would increase the likelihood of an arrest or elimination of the suspect in a timely manner and thus would have a positive impact on the community. This paper describes the Australian End to End Forensic Identification Process Project that adapted the UK model for the Australian context. The participating jurisdictions represent regional and metropolitan police districts and central fingerprint and DNA processing laboratories around Australia. The project was designed to benchmark current business processes and identify the best performance at each stage and overall with the aim of identifying areas for improvement and optimal performance to apply as a national model. An evaluation of this magnitude has not been previously carried out in Australia. The project found variation in performance overall and between fingerprint and DNA cases. There are advantages in developing a forensic evidence processing model and performance management system, particularly for volume crime investigations.