Ethical Culture in Forensic Science

This chapter explores the ethical culture within forensic science laboratories to explain the contribution of ethical reasoning skills within organizational structures. The facets of an ethical culture as defined by Craig E. Johnson (Organizational ethics: a practical approach. SAGE, Los Angeles, 299–317, 2016) provides a framework to assess the current state of forensic science laboratories. Improvements to the current system include transitioning to independent laboratories, setting up mechanisms to reduce bias, and upholding a code of ethics. Analysts must achieve scientific accuracy while maintaining honesty and impartiality (President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Report to the President, forensic science in criminal courts: Ensuring scientific validity of feature-comparison methods. Washington, DC., 2016). Serious ethical problems can arise within forensic laboratories when the law enforcement or legal cultures negatively infiltrate the forensic science culture. Forensic laboratories need to remain unbiased, therefore; the organization should be independent of other law enforcement entities. Since it is unrealistic to convert hundreds of forensic laboratories into independent organizations, other safe guards need to be implemented in order to allow the forensic scientist to maintain impartiality and limit bias (Dror IE. Aust J Forensic Sci: 1–7, 2017).