Belize’s Forensic Science Service Looks at Improving Forensic Services

The installation of a forensic lab is still pending, notwithstanding, the first annual Belize forensic science symposium was held this week and the purpose of the event was threefold. The National Forensic Science Department sought to start the discussion on priority areas related to forensics in Belize among key stakeholders. These include members of the judiciary, the office of the Director of Public Prosecution, crown counsels, heads of the prosecution branch, the Crimes Investigation Branch, the Ministry of Health and the senior staff of the forensic department.  Executive Director of the National Forensic Science Service, Gian Cho says the discussion also included the development and improvement of the country’s capacity in this science. It also hosted experts in the field from the Caribbean and the U.S.

Gian Cho

Gian Cho, Executive Director, National Forensic Science Service

“This is one way that we are trying to tackle the need to fill some of the gaps. The overall aim of this was to, actually there were three aims, to increase collaboration among the stakeholders of the justice system and other sectors of society that have a role to play in forensics. The second role or the second aim was to increase or provide some specialized training or presentations on priority areas, not all areas, priority areas for the department and the third aim was to provide some outreach to the general public, particularly the university level students because we want to start to nurture that future generation of professionals that will either enter the justice system as forensic scientists, prosecutors or investigators no. so the priority areas we focused on this year, because it is the first annual event, we selected forensic pathology and DNA evidence to be two of the areas where we invited expert presenters from outside the country, from Canada, from Washington DC and from St. Lucia to give focused talks on those topics. It was about almost fifty individuals talking about those priority areas that I mentioned talking about other areas such as quality assurance, such as the impact of forensic science on the criminal justice system. We did some case reviews. The DPP’s office presented some case reviews on the impact on their case, on the outcome of their case due to some evidence management and forensic analysis. We also touched on some topics on developing the country’s capacity, developing the department’s capacity to respond to mass fatality disasters, we also talked about deaths in police custody, we talked about decomposed remains. The body after death, how to handle a post mortem examination of decomposed remains so, several very, very relevant topics that we needed to get together.”

Joy Quinlan

Joy Quinlan, DNA Analyst, St Lucia Forensics Science Laboratory

“I’m not speaking about the cost of construction of a lab, so we are just talking about equipment and consumables, paying people, all of that. We are looking at a cost of at least three hundred thousand US dollars to start up. It depends what tests you decide to run. You can have fifty-five thousand US dollars all the way up to a hundred thousand for a year. That again depends on what your methods are and what structure you want to have in your lab.”

Alfredo Walker

Dr. Alfredo Walker, forensic pathologist, eastern Ontario Regional Forensic Pathology Unit, Ottawa Hospital 

“Forensic science is expensive. As Mrs. Quinlan said running a DNA lab is expensive and many of the Caribbean governments have economic constraints. Despite UWI Mona being the only institution that offers post graduate training in anatomical pathology for doctors in the Caribbean since 1974, there hasn’t been an establish sub specialty training program for forensic pathology in the region. So many of the island territories do not have a qualified forensic pathologist doing medico legal autopsies. And over the last two days we have been speaking about what are the potentials for miscarriages of justice when you have unqualified persons, persons who are not even pathologists sometimes, doing your medico legal post mortem examinations.”