NCJ Number
83272
Date Published
1974
Length
157 pages
Annotation
This third volume in a four-part assessment of criminalistics laboratories details measures of effectiveness for laboratory managers and planners and then applies them to data collected from criminal justice operations in Contra Costa County, Calif.; Dade County, Fla., and Columbus, Ohio between 1973 and 1974.
Abstract
Development and selection of measures of effectiveness are followed through their consecutive stages from system definition and initial formulation to data collection and analysis. This model lists 35 possible measures of effectiveness grouped according to 4 phases of the criminal justice process -- search, analysis, investigation, and adjudication. Examples of recommended measures are number of contacts between criminalist and investigator, percentage of crime scenes searched, and classification of laboratory service requests by evidence types and crime category. The percentage of resolved investigations with physical evidence compared with total resolved investigations is suggested as a basic measure in investigation. Adjudication measures focus on the contribution of physical evidence information on a case's termination, such as comparing the percentage of guilty verdicts in trials involving physical evidence with the proportion of guilty verdicts in all trials. These measures are demonstrated through applications to data collected from the three study sites. For example, ratios between physical evidence cases and all cases of guilty pleas as charged versus reduced charges indicated that the presence of physical evidence reduced plea bargaining. Charts, tables, and five references are included. The appendixes contain questionnaires used to collect data, statistical formulas, and charts representing links between significant system variables. See NCJ 83270-71 and 83273 for Vols. 1, 2, and 4.