This document was developed in order to support collaboration between investigative and laboratory functions in order to enhance both entities’ abilities to analyze their effectiveness and capability of providing information to decisionmakers and practitioners, and to improve resource allocation and the detection of emerging trends.
This document aims to support the development and enhancement of partnerships between law enforcement forensic laboratories and intelligence units in order to enhance the relevancy and applicability of forensic information. It presents research-backed practices and recommendations on how to develop or enhance the relationships between forensic labs and intelligence units by providing examples of ways to leverage lab submissions and analysis to augment intelligence operations and examples of how labs and intelligence units are working together to exchange information. The document is divided into the following sections and sub-sections: General Laboratory-Produced Intelligence, with general and relationship-building recommendations, governance and operational structure recommendations, training recommendations, and challenges; Discipline-Specific Promising Practices, noting promising practices and challenges for crime guns, drugs and controlled substances, toxicology, digital evidence/multimedia, and DNA analysis; and Other Lab Disciplines, including questioned documents, cryptanalysis, records and symbol examinations, and missing persons identification. Appendix documents include a glossary of terms, recommended resources, and examples of collaboration.