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Inside the modern Forensic Science Service
This is a mini-essay that I just wrote for somebody on the NaNoWriMo research forum: I figured it'd be useful to Sherlock fandom, too.
Source(s): My parents, who both worked for the Forensic Science Service for years.
The forensics service was privatised in... I think 1998ish? Between ten and fifteen years ago, anyway. At least one competitor was set up; I don't recall the name offhand, but they now have to bid to do jobs at the lowest price. This is a stupid idea, because doing it cheaply and doing it well are not mutually exclusive, and when it comes to crime you obviously want to do it well. (As far as I'm aware, the UK has the only privatised Forensics service in the world - that's how stupid it is.) Also, the competitor company has relatively little experience.
True story: my mum, who has now left the FSS and set up a consultancy doing work restructuring (more on that in a bit), is now working with the competitor. At the interview, one of them out and said, "We don't know what to ask because you know more about this than we do' - she's been a forensic scientist longer than this company has existed.
On the work restructuring - she was on the team for transforming the FSS when it had to become competitive. Loooots of politics - it made Private Eye a few times (thankfully she never did though!).
What sort of specialisation is your character? Offhand, I can think of fibre analysis, glass and paint (don't know what the official term is...), drugs, DNA, firearms, the ones who strip down suspect vehicles, fraud (including forgery, money-laundering, etc) and blood-spatter analysis. There are others, I'm sure. New ones are being set up all the time to cope with new advances in technology.
Firearms people are, according to the gossip, all gun nuts and a bit weird. Don't ever imply that the Drugs people are using, though. (This might be partly because my mum managed them for a while, but it would be a Very Serious Thing if they were found out to have been doing it, so I suspect not. You could put them out of a job with that implication.)
For a long time the FSS in London has been sharing a building with the Metropolitan Police; technically, the police own the building and they rent it. They were supposed to be getting a new building, but that's been delayed and delayed and my main source of information (= my mum) moved on before they'd finished. I don't know if they're still waiting.
Mostly, her friends complain about work and how it's awful now. Since this is why both my parents left, I'm inclined to say they're right, but I don't have many specifics on why it's awful. I do know there's far too much paperwork, and see previous comments about privatisation leading to sloppy work being done. (Presumably this is why Lestrade is desperate.)
Inside, it's a bit amazing (hooray for family-only open days!). The tech labs have a player for every recording method known to man (probably even Betamax), because you never know what format a piece of evidence might be in. Likewise, Firearms has a shooting range and some enormous weapons locker containing one of each type of weapon, for ballistics tests. The whole basement is given over to vehicle inspection, more or less.
Yes, those FSS overalls are made of paper. They have to be disposable, because there's too much danger of contaminating the scene if they're re-used. So naturally, they are also recyclable.
Some Sherlock-specific points:
I hope that's useful to someone. It's a weird mixture of information, and I've done my best not to give away anything that I think might be secret (it's kind of hard to tell sometimes: because both my parents are security-cleared, they did used to just chat about these things).
Source(s): My parents, who both worked for the Forensic Science Service for years.
The forensics service was privatised in... I think 1998ish? Between ten and fifteen years ago, anyway. At least one competitor was set up; I don't recall the name offhand, but they now have to bid to do jobs at the lowest price. This is a stupid idea, because doing it cheaply and doing it well are not mutually exclusive, and when it comes to crime you obviously want to do it well. (As far as I'm aware, the UK has the only privatised Forensics service in the world - that's how stupid it is.) Also, the competitor company has relatively little experience.
True story: my mum, who has now left the FSS and set up a consultancy doing work restructuring (more on that in a bit), is now working with the competitor. At the interview, one of them out and said, "We don't know what to ask because you know more about this than we do' - she's been a forensic scientist longer than this company has existed.
On the work restructuring - she was on the team for transforming the FSS when it had to become competitive. Loooots of politics - it made Private Eye a few times (thankfully she never did though!).
What sort of specialisation is your character? Offhand, I can think of fibre analysis, glass and paint (don't know what the official term is...), drugs, DNA, firearms, the ones who strip down suspect vehicles, fraud (including forgery, money-laundering, etc) and blood-spatter analysis. There are others, I'm sure. New ones are being set up all the time to cope with new advances in technology.
Firearms people are, according to the gossip, all gun nuts and a bit weird. Don't ever imply that the Drugs people are using, though. (This might be partly because my mum managed them for a while, but it would be a Very Serious Thing if they were found out to have been doing it, so I suspect not. You could put them out of a job with that implication.)
For a long time the FSS in London has been sharing a building with the Metropolitan Police; technically, the police own the building and they rent it. They were supposed to be getting a new building, but that's been delayed and delayed and my main source of information (= my mum) moved on before they'd finished. I don't know if they're still waiting.
Mostly, her friends complain about work and how it's awful now. Since this is why both my parents left, I'm inclined to say they're right, but I don't have many specifics on why it's awful. I do know there's far too much paperwork, and see previous comments about privatisation leading to sloppy work being done. (Presumably this is why Lestrade is desperate.)
Inside, it's a bit amazing (hooray for family-only open days!). The tech labs have a player for every recording method known to man (probably even Betamax), because you never know what format a piece of evidence might be in. Likewise, Firearms has a shooting range and some enormous weapons locker containing one of each type of weapon, for ballistics tests. The whole basement is given over to vehicle inspection, more or less.
Yes, those FSS overalls are made of paper. They have to be disposable, because there's too much danger of contaminating the scene if they're re-used. So naturally, they are also recyclable.
Some Sherlock-specific points:
- My personal fanon is that Anderson is fibre analysis and this is why he hates Sherlock. Sherlock doesn't bother with the overalls, so he probably drops hair and coat/scarf fibres all over the place. (Anderson being fibre analysis would also explain why he's not meant to be present at a drugs bust, of course.) I was writing a fic to this effect, but it never really went anywhere...
- The police can and do have their moments of utter stupidity. One of my favourite stories is about the policeman who brought a bunch of tomato plants to the front desk, convinced they were marijuana. By the time it reached me, the plant had green tomatoes on it, but I'm not convinced that that's not a bit of embellishment-in-retelling.
- Everyone is security cleared, right down to the cleaners. Not that getting clearance would be a problem for Sherlock. Likewise, a lot of the work is top-secret.
- The London branch was in Waterloo, but as I said, they might have moved by now. There's also a branch in Birmingham, and a couple more that I'm less familiar with.
- The Service is classified as vital and is open 365 days a year. When 7/7 happened, most of them were trying to get in to work while everyone else was being told to stay home.
- The DNA analysis machine takes three hours to run. No exceptions. All this 'we got the results in ten minutes' malarkey in The Great Game is about as realistic as blowing up a CCTV image to see the highly-pixellated car numberplate in more detail (and don't get my dad started on that).
- Speaking of which... police watch TV too. And they, too, think you can blow up the pixellated numberplate to see what it says. You can't.
- A lot of the real-life FSS are Holmes fans. Of course, they've never had to work with him ;)
I hope that's useful to someone. It's a weird mixture of information, and I've done my best not to give away anything that I think might be secret (it's kind of hard to tell sometimes: because both my parents are security-cleared, they did used to just chat about these things).