Northumbria
academics were among key presentation speakers at major international
conference on forensic science.
The
European Academy of Forensic Science 2018 Conference (EAFS2018) was held in
Lyon recently. It attracted over 800 participants, chiefly criminal justice
professionals, but also academics, from the Americas, Asia and Australasia and
Europe.
Law
professor Tim J Wilson of Northumbria’s Centre for Evidence and CriminalJustice Studies (NCEJS) was one of only two British members
of the Conference’s Scientific Committee. Together with co-chair Professor
Pierre Margot, of Lausanne University, he led a workshop focused on “improving multi-disciplinary
problem solving and strategic thinking at the interface of law, science,
technology and politics”. Professor Wilson spoke about how criminal justice is
being affected internationally by political issues such as Brexit and wider
economic or technological changes, including police budget cuts and the
increased use of machine learning.
He
was supported during the session by NCEJS colleagues Emma Piasecki from
Northumbria Law School and Sophie Carr from Applied Sciences, who discussed the
reliability of forensic science testimony in court
They
jointly presented a paper that stripped away some misconceptions among lawyers
concerning the reliability of forensic science testimony in court.
‘Even
forms of expert evidence widely regarded as reliable, if not infallible, by
lawyers, judges and juries may incorporate aspects that are uncertain,
contestable or error-prone. What a forensic scientist says in evidence cannot
be taken on blind trust. Lawyers need to understand how tests should be
conducted, measured, analysed etc. and any limitations in the inferences that
can be validly drawn from reported results.’
Their
presentation also complemented important research in the Netherlands and
Switzerland about the significance of statistics for demonstrating the probable
strength of scientific expert evidence. It demonstrated how published research
by Northumbria academics fell within the mainstream of current international
forensic science research.
Papers
in the session were presented by colleagues from countries ranging from
Australia, Belgium Sweden and Switzerland, as well as a speaker from the United
Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
NCEJS
Deputy Director Adam Jackson spoke about one of the most difficult challenges
facing criminal justice: how to maintain a balance between the law of evidence
and privacy rights when dealing with cyber-related crime and the gathering of
evidence from digital devices such as mobile phones. Adam challenged conference
delegates to consider ‘whether the current investigatory and procedural rules
remain fit for purpose in the face of the increasingly digital nature of crime
and evidence.’
NCEJS
colleagues look forward to seeing the nature of the international response to
Adam Jackson’s paper, which will also emerge from an international research
project about policing cybercrime on the ‘Dark Web’ (with Northumbria University
colleagues Professor Chrisje Brants, Gemma Davies, Derek Johnson and Professor
Wilson and co-researchers from the Netherlands Open University, Stockholm
University and the Norwegian Police University College) funded by Scandinavian,
Dutch and British research councils.
The
next European Academy of Forensic Science conference is scheduled for Stockholm
in 2021. Ideas based on Northumbria University’s research and teaching will
again contribute to the development of thinking at that important event for criminal
justice professionals and academics
