Are Forensic Science Services Club Goods? An Analysis of the Optimal Forensic Science Service Delivery Model

Abstract

Forensic science has been described as a public good by practitioners, legal professionals, and scholars, many of whom were suggesting that forensic science is simply something good for the public. It would indeed be difficult to argue otherwise. In an economic sense, the concept of a public good is defined differently from this colloquial meaning, however, leading to confusion in discussions between forensic scientists and business consultants concerning how to evaluate laboratory performance and ultimately consider strategic change from an economic or efficiency perspective. This article discusses what economists mean by a public or private good, with an application using the forensic science industry. Forensic science is likely neither a purely public or purely private good, but rather a club good that contains a degree of both the public and private. When calculated, the degree of publicness of this club good will aid in determining the appropriate institutional framework from which to provide forensic science services, as well as its optimal jurisdiction size and production level.

Keywords:

• Economics
• institutions
• forensic laboratories
• club goods
• public goods

Notes

1. For simplicity the word “good” is used generally throughout this paper to mean anything that is produced by a firm. This could include physical goods such as a drug test kit or nonphysical services such as the analysis of evidence by a forensic scientist. The economic theory used to model goods and services is identical, so no information is lost and any conclusions will be the same.

2. More explicitly, consider the purely private goods (X ₁, …, X_n ), where the private good X_j can be divided out to persons i=1, 2, …, s where every individual i will receive Xⁱ _j and also . For good X_j , the optimal arrangement for consuming the good is one person, where any increased consumption from person i subtracts from the X_j available to the rest of society.

3. More explicitly, consider the purely public goods (X _n+1, …, X _n+m ). If i consumes Xⁱ _n+j , the total original amount of X _n+j is still available to consume by other individuals, so that Xⁱ _n+j =X _n+j for all individuals. Theoretically, the optimal sharing arrangement for these goods would be an infinitely large number of sharing members.

4. Where non-rival implies that the consumption of the good does not affect any other persons consumption of that same good and non-excludable implies that no one can be denied access to consuming the good.