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
