CIVIL LIBERTIES -- JUSTICE DELAYED IS JUSTICE DENIED

progressreport.org
2/24/2005

CIVIL LIBERTIES -- JUSTICE DELAYED IS JUSTICE DENIED:
A government study of crime labs
(http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=542&ncid=693&e=10&u=/ap/20050224/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/crime_labs)
nationwide has revealed that "outdated facilities and a shortage of
employees led to a backlog of hundreds of thousand of criminal cases."
Over the course of a year, the investigated crime labs -- all of them
publicly funded facilities -- suffered a 70 percent increase in unfilled
requests; such an "overload threatened to delay justice for suspects and
victims" who must sit in limbo (or prison cells) until such cases are
handled. Furthermore, one of the co-authors of the study had this to say
about the cases that actually do get processed: "Labs are just trying
to process cases as fast as they can, get them out the door. That
becomes the prime objective, and sometimes a very necessary component of labs
-- ensuring accuracy and quality -- takes a back seat to just getting
the case done."