h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I must have missed this in the news, but a little bird tells me that forensics has been privatised. Now I see the benefit to some privitisations, but surely it can never work if there is no commerical risk - we saw this with the railways - they could not be allowed to fail so the govt. was always going to have to offer up enough money to bail them out if things went badly. Surely the situation is the same here - we can't have such an important part of our criminal justice system fail.

Just wondering if anyone can comfirm that this has happened, and if so what people think to it.

more scary still. How much do you trust the results of private forensics? The money saved by out-sourcing can easily be spent again by investigating possible conflicts of interest.

'Tis true, http://www.forensic.gov.uk/forensic/entry.htm the offical site has the details. Also some gory case reports for the gruesome minded amoungst you.

It's not being fully privatised from what I can make out, it seems to be a scam to get more investment... From the limited number of ones I've seen in the NHS they do seem to work.

if the NZ experience is anything to go by partial privatisation is usually a softener for the real thing

even scarier that it is happening under a so-called Labour Govt! Makes you wonder what the Tories would do!!!!

i'm not sure if the forensics here are contracted out, but i know that that kind of stuff used to go through Crown Research Institutes (CRIs) which got abolished at some point... We have just had so many waves of privatisations and corporatisations (turning things into State Owned Enterprises which must make a profit and be run on business lines, with no requirements to fill any other targets) that it's hard to know anymore.

But I do know that whether or not forensics here are still done by the State, in some form or another, the backlog just for DNA testing is so long that the police reckon heaps of crimes are occurring that could have been prevented by a fast turn around, ie they could arrest someone within a week or two who then goes on to commit another three crimes before the DNA tests come back and allow an arrest in three months time. Although personally I'm a bit uncomfortable about an arrest made when they have no other evidence than DNA!!

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You need a lot of evidence to convict, we gear our criminal justice system in such a way that we'd rather realse the guilty than convict the innocent so you really do need more evidence than seems necassary at first glance. DNA is good supporting evidence, but you can't convict on it alone. (I think its something like 1 in 50,000 people appear to have the same DNA - though since we've mapped the human genome I don't see why we can't get it down to 1 in 6billion)

The point of having a buisness that makes a profit is that it will only work if it is good at what it does, thus makes more profit. That means that the best businesses that are beneficial to society survive - while the worse buisnesses fail. This works moderately well - there are two problems. The first is that of advertising, it is the buisnesses *percived* usefullness that gets it money, not its actual usefullness. Last few decades the trend has become to spend money promoting your buisness and making people think its worth having rather than to actually make it any better - so we no longer see the best buisness surviving. Secondly it only works in sectors where a buisness can fail and that there is another one to take their place example: A brewer can make crap beer, nobody drinks it and he goes out of buisness any pubs stocking his alcohol switch to a different brewer. The average quality of the beer goes up, the people doing the better job have the money. The system works. Now lets suppose we cannot afford for the system to fail: Railtrack does a crap job, looks like its running out of money, govt realises we can't afford to let it fail bails it out. The service has not improved. The people doing a bad job have the money. The system fails. Or lets suppose there is no other company to take the place: NHS privatised *shudder* NHS fails Govt decides not to bail them out since that would undermine the system. No other healthcare service appropriate to take its place. Country goes without an NHS. System has failed.

Some things can be privitised to good effect. Others cannot. This is one of them - what the hell do they think that they are doing!

Hang on, from what I've read in the press release we don't know how extensive the privatisation is actually going to be. We don't know how it's going to work and we don't know what mechanisms are going to be in place. We're just all generalising from a hypothetical model of privatisation.

Say that the system was a case of the CPS pays the FSS for the work that takes place on a piece by piece basis. The interests of The CPS would be to get good quality evidence, if the quality feel then there would be an immeadate redress. The CPS could turn around and say "we're not paying for this" and if the quality feel and less convictiosn took place they could see it instantly.

I am terribly left wing as I'm sure you all know, I have even in the past been a memebr of the Socialist workers party, (which I have left). But so far our arguments seem to be summed up in "privatisation is Bad guys Bad" But it can work, and I've seen it work, I can't deny experiences just because they don't match my political dogma

In the case of railtrack the customers were the rail operating companies, the rail operating companies were interested in getting the cheapest deal possible. They had no way of knowing how well maintained the lines were. But if the a privatised Forensic science service provides faulty evidence then it will not hold up court, so the custormer - the CPS will demand improves or threaten not to pay.

However in this case there is only going to be one customer the government, and only one provider, so if the provider is not making money they will simply put up the charges.

I have temped in a number of departments including the housing department. In the summer of my first year the repairs on council houses were done "in house" and people were waiting weeks for repairs to be done, if they were done wrong then there was very little that they could do about it. In the summer after my second year the service had been privatised, the new company would charge the council for the repairs that it carried out, and the service did improve immensly. Under the council there was no incentive to increase the number of repairs that were being done on council houses. Once it was privatised they got paid per job, so suddenly there was an increase in the number of jobs that took place, and people were getting repairs done that they had waited years for.

If an builder was doing repairs that were poor quality then there was an incentive ask him to stop, because it meant that they were loosing money.

But you run into the second problem - If we did turn around and say "Im not paying for that" because we do not like the evidence for whatever reason then we are going into court without as much evidence as we should have and the justice system suffers. If we never turn around and say that then there is no incentive to do well. Now if there were an alternate vendor for the evidence and you could say "Im not paying fo yours because his is better" then you have competition and the service might improve. You can get someone else in to do repairs and you can probably afford to live without them without an inordinate amount of difficulty. I'm not saying privitisation:bad, just that it can only work in some areas.

I don't think that you can tell someone whose toliet isn't working, or whose roof is leaking that they can live without the repairs, they are in many cases essential.

In this case I think that the threat of not paying for forensic science working would lead to an increase in the management interest in the quality of the work before it took place. The services could be taken back in house if things got very very bad. But then we would have lived with the service being very very bad for sometime, and the increase in quality would take time.

Erm, I can see the FSS Building out of my office window! I suppose I could go ask Having spoken to a few people who work there, they are already under huge pressure to get results out. However the pressure is external (ie Police / CPS / Politics). If they are a private company then surely there will be internal pressure on those at the front line to increase the turn around time possibly leading to lower quality. In the case of DNA, the output is 'Yes' or 'No'. Not much to base an external judgement on until the case comes to appeal, so more likely is that there will be more cases going to appeal and more work for them??

"I think its something like 1 in 50,000 people appear to have the same DNA - though since we've mapped the human genome I don't see why we can't get it down to 1 in 6billion"

Not quite, what happens when DNA matching is that they only check certain bases. These bases are determined tend to be the random ones that can change since these are more likely to be individually specific. The smaller the number of bases checked, the less likely that a match is unique. I think the UK checks 10,000 and the US 100,000 or something. There was a thread on AskH2G2 about this if you can find it
The problem with the above is that if the individual comes from a small gene pool, ie a particularly close community ('hicks from the sticks') then there is a very high probability that the match is not unique and whilst you match, so probably would your siblings, your aunties, uncles and grandparents. More bases checks, less likely to match. Equally worrying is that even if you come from a genetically diverse population, there is still a chance that someone else somewhere in the country could match as well. Hence why in the US there have been instances of jurors being excluded by the prosecution because of their knowledge of DNA testing and the above problems.

I think it is closer to 1 in 100,ooo at best.

I always wondered if they tested OJ Simpsons sons DNA in that court case. It seemed possible that he could have been a suspect and Dad could have theoretically proetected him. That could explain alot.
*active imagination*

The dna should be done in matters of long sentances and murder cases. Certanly with the death penalty where applicable. In the US no one should be put to death without it, no one should be senatanced to death without DNA.

Ashcroft (US) has pushed for the casual DNA collection wherever he can, except in these matters. Unless it has gotten by me, which is possible.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3519773&thesection=news&thesubsection=general&thesecondsubsection=

this is a brief article about the effects of the huge backlog of forensic casework here in NZ - charges may even have to be dropped it is taking so long. still not sure whether it has been contracted out or privatised or neither...

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The drive to privitisation seems to be based (from the attitudes of people I've talked to who support it) on the premise that anyone employed by the state is incapable of doing a good job. "Miss-management" they scream.

NZ's telecom was sold off to two american companies who sunk money into it and managed it a little better for a while. The government retained some control to set out some rules termed the "kiwi share" to stop us being ripped off. The result has been that last year Telecom had a dept/equity that only a company of it's massive size could ride out. Also the government no longer has this supplimental income.

Almost every wholesale privitisation has turned to custard here. There are many stories and 99% involve american ownership resulting in asset stripping.

Where's the point? NZpost is still government owned and run. It exists in verious forms in a number of countries and makes large amounts of money while still being able to support community projects.

There are cases where outsourcing is a good idea and a great help to the local economy (although companies with government contracts are known to get fat and lazy). However most problems can be solved by changes in structure and the re-hire of better management.

The power structure in the UK goes like this:

THE WEALTHY
THE GOVERNMENT
THE PEOPLE

Nationalised industries got a bad reputation during the 1970s not because they were massively inefficient but because the country as a whole did not restructure so as to be efficient compared to emerging industrial nations. They were not restructured properly due to lack of investment and a power struggle between the unions and the government. So in the 1980s the Thatcher government destroyed British industry so that it could not function any longer. This enabled a sell off and in turn that enabled a restructure of the UK economic environment and some might say more importantly to Thatcher, the perpetuation of the status quo that had been threatened by the power of the unions.

Privitisation is no longer seen as a taboo and anyone who opposes it gets cast as some kind of Luddite who wants to go back to the three day week. Through schemes like Compulsory Competitive Tendering, Best Value outsourcing and Private Finance Initiatives the market has been steadily brought into areas that are still government run.

This is a way getting round government red tape and delivering quick and cheap services as Z explained in his example about housing repairs. However private companies do not have to provide workers with the same employment rights, pensions and safety standards as government and local authorities have to. Situations like these are making things worse for workers in nearly every case but only better for consumers in some cases.

The railways, gas, water, electricity, who has noticed an improvement in these services since privitisation? British Nuclear Fuels is the worst example of all even ignoring its very dodgy safety record and just looking at its commercial performance. Constanly being bailed out by the government becuase its an embarassment despite this it cannot be allowed to fail and would be too expesive and impractical to change to coal powered production of electricity since the bulk of that infrastructure was abandoned to make way for a.......nuclear powered future.

Inefficiancies in public owned industries and companies are not always simply due to lazy workers.

Most recently you only need to look at the state of NASA to see what a lack of investment and vision can do to public bodies. Whatsmore outsourcing work to private companies has been indicated as one of the problems that lead to the shuttle disaster.

If the private company that takes over the processing of DNA evidence suceeds it will very likely be at the expense of workers safety, pay and benefits. If it fails commercially it will be at the expense of the investors and the tax payers whilst the management will, if other companies are anything to go by, go elsewhere with a nice payoff in their pockets.