30 31Global Identification - March 2009 www.global-identification.com30 31Global Identification - March 2009 www.global-identification.com

by David C. Wyld, Southeastern

Louisiana University

the most popular scripted series shows in American television this decade be-long to what is commonly referred to as the “CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) fran-chise.” What began as sim-ply the CSI show in 2000 has now expanded into three separate weekly series, all on the CBS Television Network:

the original CSI, set in Las Ve-gas, CSI: Miami, and CSI: New York.

CSI and the field of criminal science has become a cul-tural and legal phenomenon in the United States. The CSI franchise itself has morphed into video games, comic books, serialized novels, and

EGOVERNMENT

The debate rages on about “old” versus “new” media, with many media com-

mentators claiming that net-work television is itself dead. These critics are certainly right in one regard as curios-ity in “the dead” is indeed ris-ing among the viewing. This is evidenced by the fact that

The field of criminal science has become somewhat of a phenomenon in the last 8

years thanks to the popularity of the CSI TV series. Reality often strays from the glossy

world of TV series however, and in the case of real-life CSI it seems that RFID is best

placed to help it live up to people’s idealized visions

Automated CSI

photo by Daniel Y. Go

30 31Global Identification - March 2009 www.global-identification.com

30 31Global Identification - March 2009 www.global-identification.com30 31Global Identification - March 2009 www.global-identification.com

even kids’ toys, including a juvenile DNA lab and foren-sics kit. There has also been increased interest in forensic science careers and educa-tion, prompting new training programs at both the college and even high school levels focused on criminal investi-gations. Today, there is even a recognized phenomenon in legal and law enforcement circles commonly referred to as the “CSI effect.” With the popularity of not just the CSI shows, but other crime-related television series, including Crossing Jordan, Silent Witness, and the Law & Order franchise (which also includes three series), there is growing awareness and sophistication amongst the American public about criminal investigations and forensic science. As a conse-quence, in real courtrooms, juries are now expecting to see real, forensic evidence ‒ not just testimony and circumstantial evidence ‒ to prove guilt in serious crimi-nal cases. This means the bar has been effectively raised to prove a defendant’s guilt ‒ by television shows that show crimes where there is typically a relative abun-dance of blood, hair, and various body fluids, as well as bullet fragments and shell casings, left at every crime scene. Following a number of high profile cases reversed thanks to DNA evidence proving a convicted person’s innocence, there is a grow-ing sense that forensic evi-dence is truly the key factor underpinning today’s crimi-nal justice system. However, the CSI effect is not without

its critics in both academic and legal circles. This is due to what they perceive as the disconnection between the

idealized world of television crime scene investigations and what occurs in the real world. And what happens in the real world is often far less organized than what is ex-pected ‒ and needed ‒ in to-day’s world of CSI-enhanced world of criminal justice.

Evidence Handling 101

There is no setting in the pri-vate or public sectors where a verifiable “chain of custody” is more essential ‒ or more lacking ‒ than the handling of evidence in criminal cases. In the United States, the legal system is dependent on the proper handling of all forms of physical evidence ‒ from bodily fluids to cigarette butts to guns, knives and weapons of all sorts. Such evidence must be managed from its retrieval from the actual crime scene through storage (with handling by police investigators and both criminal prosecutors and defense attorneys) un-til the items of evidence are presented in court if ‒ and when ‒ cases actually go to trial ‒ often times several years after the crime has oc-curred. Thus, all law enforce-ment agencies ‒ from local police and county sheriffs to

state and federal agencies ‒ must be concerned with the “chain of custody” as they collect, register, store, ship

and track the evidence in their possession for criminal cases. Ensuring that this very unusual supply chain ‒ from origin in the field to use in the courtroom ‒ is secure and verifiable has been cat-egorized as one of the fun-damental responsibilities of law enforcement agencies, one that underpins the ef-fectiveness and accuracy of the criminal justice system.

However, most law enforce-ment agencies today have evidence-handling systems that remain largely un-changed from the 1950s. Most police departments simply have an evidence room (and for agencies in larger cities, this “room” may be a whole warehouse). There, evidence is stored for possible use in investigat-ing and prosecuting crimi-nal cases ‒ often needing

All across the country, cases have been brought against police officers for internal theft of valuable items

Automated CSI

photo by Al Howat

There is no setting in the

private or public sectors where

a verifiable “chain of custody”

is more essential ‒ or more

lacking ‒ than the handling of

evidence in criminal cases

30 31Global Identification - March 2009 www.global-identification.com

32 Global Identification - March 2009

electronics, and cash ‒ stolen from evidence storage fa-cilities. When police agencies do conduct manual invento-

ries of their evidence rooms, they are often surprised at the items that are not found and confounded by those that are. Some of those found date back to cases that are decades old, items that should have long ago been returned to their right-ful owner, or else, sold at auc-tion, donated to charity, or simply disposed of after the case they were being held for had been adjudicated. And surprisingly, there has been very little use of “new” tech-nology in this area, with many agencies just now moving to hybrid systems (with com-puterized databases fed by manual record keeping) and very few barcode based evi-dence-tracking systems on the market today.

RFID is on the case

This sounds like a job for RFID, and today, there are several American firms that are looking to automatic identification technology as a way to reinvent the evidence management and tracking process. With RFID-based systems, they can offer law enforcement agencies ‒ for the first time ‒ the pros-pect of having an electronic, verifiable chain of custody

for evidentiary items in crimi-nal cases, something vital for conducting criminal investi-gations and prosecutions in the CSI-influenced world of American justice. Such sys-tems also hold forward the prospect of not just more effective evidence manage-ment internally within a sin-gle agency, but new possibil-ities for bringing visibility and connections to what have been heretofore the ultimate information silos ‒ with each separate police department having its own, often non-computerized and accuracy-challenged ‒ evidence track-ing system in place.

The leading players in this market to date include: • Intelligentz, based in Austin, Texas, offering the Clues and Blutrax tracking systems • Lockwood Technology, based in Manchester, New Hampshire, offering the QuickTrac system • Sysgen, based in Melville, New York, offering the eTraxx system

Each of these companies markets variations on the same idea ‒ RFID-based tracking of evidence from the point of collection in the field to the evidence stor-age facility and tracking all movements of such articles throughout their life span as items involved in active criminal cases. Passive labels or tags can be applied at the crime scene, with location and date/time data being recorded through the use of either RFID readers or PDAs equipped with GPS. When the items are brought in

eGovernment to be retained for years and

handled by numerous hands in that time period. These critical items are managed

most often using paper-based systems, often with-out computerized inventory-ing and logging of evidence being checked in and out of the area. Not only are such manual evidence tracking systems time and labor in-tensive for police officers, they are prone both to inac-curacy and errors and to in-tentional misuse and abuse. Criminal cases have had to be dismissed before going to trial or been lost in the court-room due to critical items of evidence simply being lost in the evidence room. Likewise, all across the country, cases have been brought against police officers for internal theft of valuable items ‒ such as narcotics, guns, jewelry,

Movement toward

standardizing RFID-based

evidence management

protocols and further sharing

of information between

law enforcement agencies’

databases could usher in

nothing less than a new era in

policing

Narcotics, guns, jewelry, electronics and cash are the items most often stolen from evidence storage facilities

33www.global-identification.com

from the field, they are held in a secure space with fixed RFID readers monitoring the doorways of the evidence storage room or warehouse ‒ or even subspaces within them. Hand-held readers can then be used to locate items within the evidence facility. The systems work with either proprietary inventory man-agement systems and/or standard database software to provide constant inven-tory reporting capabilities, along with the ability to cre-ate an electronic chain of custody report for individual pieces of evidence to know “where” and “when” items were viewed or moved in a criminal investigation. As smart cards and electronic IDs are integrated into police agencies, the “who” actually handled the item can be au-tomatically recorded without any human intervention as well.

All three firm’s systems ‒ while relatively very new ‒ are gaining traction in the law enforcement mar-ketplace, with each having multiple agencies using their respective tracking systems, and each having its own unique features. For instance, the handheld reader used in the QuickTrac system not only tags the evidence on-site, but captures a digital photo of the item in the field. Intelligentz’s Clues system includes the option of using active tags to track higher value ‒ whether monetary or case-critical in nature ‒ items in the evidence storage facil-ity. As such, the system can send alerts to supervisors if

forcement agencies’ data-bases, this could usher in nothing less than a new era in policing. Michael Lucas, the founder and CEO of In-telligentz, recently described his vision for how such stan-dardization and interlinking of law enforcement evidence management systems might work, when he said that “Having multiple agencies using a unified chain-of-cus-tody application would cre-ate an unprecedented level of crime scene visibility.” Lu-cas emphasized his point by illustrating that: “A size 5 glove found at a crime scene in one city might match the same type of glove found in another state. Without us-ing such a system, there’s no easy way to link those pieces of evidence.” So, over the next decade, RFID will likely play an increasingly vital role in helping to piece the puzzle together and help solve crimes by improving evidence collection, man-agement, and tracking capa-bilities ‒ creating new oppor-tunities for the RFID industry in the process ‒ and not just in the U.S, but around the world as the power of the CSI effect goes global.

such high-security evidence is moved without authoriza-tion ‒ even within the room or warehouse.

What does RFID evidence tracking mean for the future of law enforcement and criminal justice as well as the RFID industry? Certainly, the timing of the convergence between the technological leap forward that RFID rep-resents and the rising ex-pectations in criminal justice ‒ due to the CSI effect ‒ will propel many ‒ if not most ‒ law enforcement agencies to have to seriously exam-ine their evidence tracking processes. This should bode well for these early entrant RFID integrators that are pioneering auto-ID technol-ogy in the law enforcement area. However, it will likely mean that we could see big-ger RFID players also enter the law enforcement verti-cal as a new growth market for their own hardware, soft-ware and services or through market consolidation. If there is movement toward standardizing RFID‒based evidence management pro-tocols and further sharing of information between law en-

photos by revolute

One RFID solution for evidence

tracking includes the option

of using active tags to track

higher value items in the

evidence storage facility