Development of forensic standards in China: a review

Abstract

Forensic science is crucial for the administration of justice and case investigation. In China, political-legal organizations, including the courts, public security, procuratorate, and judicial administration, developed their own forensic practices before 2004. As a result, the frequent and repeated appraisals undermined judicial authority and credibility. Thus, a law was published in 2005 to improve the uniform forensic management system by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, leading to the establishment of the Forensic Administration of the Ministry of Justice in 2006. During this process, the increased accreditation and interflow highlighted the role of consensus in forensic standards for forensic service providers to avoid uncertainty regarding the methods used and interpretation of results. In 2017, a policy document was promulgated again to strengthen the importance of the uniform standards, which also proposed to establish a new national technical committee for the standardization of forensic science by the General Office of the State Council. In 2018, despite the continuing problems concerning uniformity, the Forensic Administration of the Ministry of Justice was merged into the Public Legal Services Administration. Yet, there is still a long way to go for the national technical committee for the standardization of forensic science. This paper analyses the evolution of forensic standards internationally and nationally, discusses the existing problems, and proposes relative solutions. Moreover, it discusses the future of standards development with the deepening of the reformation of both the national standardization and judicial system.

Keywords:

• Forensic sciences
• Standards
• accreditation
• technical committee
• reform

Authors’ contributions

Xiaodan He carried out the studies and drafted the manuscript; Chengtao Li participated in its design and coordination and helped to draft the manuscript. Both authors contributed to the final text and approved it.

Compliance with ethical standards

This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by grants from the Ministry of Justice [grant number 20SFB4017], the Shanghai science and Technology Innovation Fund [grant number 19DZ2201400], and State Administration for Market Regulation [grant number 2019MK139].