Is the Charleston Marine Forensics Program accredited?
Currently we are not, but this is a major goal for the Program. Since there is no accreditation body specifically for marine and wildlife forensic laboratories, we are working towards ISO17025 certification, which is a set of standards developed for quality assurance/quality control of testing and calibration laboratories. The accreditation process is one part of a quality assurance program, along with proficiency testing, continuing education, and other programs to help forensics labs provide better overall service to the criminal justice system and defendants. Even in the absence of accreditation, we take many steps to ensure that our procedures can withstand courtroom scrutiny. We design our tests using methods that are well accepted in the scientific community, maintain an extensive archive of voucher species for comparison to evidence items, follow chain-of-custody procedures, and maintain a secure facility for evidence storage and analysis.
