The invisible crisis facing forensic providers in the United States

Abstract

There is a dissonance between the public perception of forensic practice in the United States and reality. Portrayed as infallible and universally available, the truth is that the awkward evolution of forensic practice has created fissures in its foundations, affecting both the quality and quantity of these critical services. These fissures have only widened over time, creating problems that require creative solutions.

Within the United States, every level of government provides forensic services, and there is no overarching authority over forensic providers. The recent reevaluation of the Chevron deference doctrine by the Supreme Court ensures that this is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. Under Chevron deference, courts would defer to regulatory agencies interpretations when laws were ambiguous. This new ruling transfers that responsibility back to the courts, making the creation of a new regulatory agency over forensic providers even less likely. Thus, any meaningful change to forensic practice must come from within the profession. As unlikely as this may seem, it has occurred before.

This perspective allows us to see the hidden challenges forensic providers face and propose potential solutions that practitioners can implement to increase the quality of their work and the resilience of the system they operate within. By evaluating how forensic practice has implemented change in the past, this paper proposes solutions that have worked before and expands on others from different industries with similar challenges.