The Rhode Island State Crime Laboratory, under the supervision of the University of Rhode Island, would be taken over by the state under a bill that renounces the responsibility of the lab.
President Marc Parlange wrote a letter in support of the lab operating solely under state control, according to Dennis Hilliard, the director of the Rhode Island State Crime Lab. Under state supervision, the crime lab would lose some of its resources, which provide for criminal justice students, as resources would be redirected to law enforcement.
University laboratories falling under the umbrella of law enforcement raises concerns for the purposes of perception, according to Michael DiLauro, a retired public defender for The Just Criminal Justice Group. The issue concerns the landscape of forensic sciences in the United States and how it’s evolved in the last 20 years. The majority of forensic science programs across the U.S. are controlled by law enforcement, while the programs at the crime lab are run by a URI
commission.
The intention for the new legislation over crime lab operation was that the university and law enforcement would work together, according to DiLauro. Under House Bill 6229, the Rhode Island attorney general would be in charge of who works at the laboratory, stating that the bill reflected the best practices for forensic science.
Instead of one person overseeing the programs, the university should have some control over URI’s forensic science program, according to DiLauro.
“The legislative process is supposed to be collaborative,” DiLauro said. “The stakeholders who are involved [in the process] should come into some kind of compromise [over the legislation].”
When the legislation was introduced on April 11 to move the laboratory to the attorney general’s office, the university cited a 2009 study by the National Academy of Sciences, according to Hilliard. The study said forensic science laboratories should not come under the direct authority of a law enforcement agency because of possible bias in criminal cases. However, 80 to 85% are under law enforcement, public safety or an attorney general’s office.
“We are the example of how a laboratory can be independent from law enforcement and still function properly,” Hilliard said.
There was interest in consolidating the laboratory into the Rhode Island Department of Health and the state crime lab, according to Hilliard. The RIDOH tests DNA, drug chemistry and toxicology, while the state crime lab examines firearms, fingerprints and trace evidence.
Theoretically, the two laboratories should be put together as one unit because the URI pharmacy department was looking to build their new facility on campus, according to Hilliard. There is room in the crime laboratory to fit the pharmacy as well.
URI has operated the state crime lab under state law since the 1970s, according to Hilliard. The laboratory started under URI chemistry professor Harold Harrison in 1949, who offered his services as a chemist to law enforcement to investigate crimes. Through analyzing DNA and fingerprints, Harrison created a project called the Laboratories for Scientific Criminal Investigation.
Harrison’s project required funding, according to Hilliard. When all of the money was used up from grants from the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, the project moved to the College of Pharmacy in the 1960s to study drugs as the Vietnam War ended in 1975. Soldiers brought back different types of substances like marijuana and heroin for investigators to study, renaming the project the State Crime Laboratory.
“If [the state] were to take away the space [in the university] that we had created here for [forensic] training and analysis, we wouldn’t be able to do what we do now,” Hilliard said.
