CSI: Mississippi.

• Author: Laska, Paul R.
• Position: Letters - Letter to the editor

As a retired crime scene investigator and fingerprint specialist, I read Radley Balko's "CSI: Mississippi" (November) with great interest. Balko's article illuminated the major problem facing forensic science today, namely, a gradual but continuing deterioration in ethics, honesty, and integrity.

When I entered the field in the early 1970s, the most important concept I was taught was that my allegiance was to the evidence--not to an arrest, not to a prosecution, but to the evidence. In those days, those of us on the police side and those on the crime lab side strongly believed in this. I have known several professionals who endangered their careers by maintaining their allegiance to this concept.

In the last 30 years, I have watched a change in the field. In areas like crime scene investigation and fingerprint science, many agencies have begun assigning otherwise broken personnel to these positions or, more often, cheapening the job by bringing in untrained personnel at low salaries and turning them loose. I was brought into a system that oversaw my activity and ensured that, even if on the job, my training demanded continued improvement in my knowledge, abilities, and skills. Today many small and even medium-sized agencies employ CSI and latent fingerprint examiners whose entire training consists of some junior college...