Introduction
In many emergencies plans, public health and government agencies launched, thorough organizational planning ends when death is confirmed, and the remains are “sent to the mortuary.” There is often a lack of understanding that identifying individual bodies and even bodily fragments (in the aftermath of many significant disasters) is the first and perhaps most crucial step in starting and supporting the grieving process that allows families and the entire community to respond to these incidents in a manageable manner. Thus, it is worth noting that Disaster Victim Identification is the name given to this procedure.
Topic’s Broader Context
Given that many multi-fatality occurrences include victims from all over the world, it is unavoidable that the investigators entrusted with identifying these victims would have been trained, accumulated expertise, and worked under the jurisdictional supervision of various nations. This can be perplexing, especially when these investigatory teams are entrusted with cooperating (De Boer et al., 2019). As a result, standardization in the identification procedure is necessary, especially when multi-jurisdictional victims and investigators are involved.
It should be noted that the suggestions in this Decision Notice are backed up by an Outline Business Case, which contains preliminary evaluations and material that will be expanded upon as the implementation phase progresses. Section22a must be developed to determine and agree on crucial components of the partnership, such as the presence and continuous support of the RICC and the design, development, and funding of the planned Regional DVI Coordinator post. This agreement should also recognize the command-and-control mechanisms because the suggested employment model is a virtual hub and spoke architecture (Williams & Wienroth, 2014). Options for joint training delivery, post-incident debriefing and assistance, and recognition of health and safety factors beyond PPE should all be part of the implementation process (Johnson & Riemen, 2019). The idea to consolidate training and accreditation data into a single central system should be carefully considered since it will result in a two-tier structure within forces in skill management rather than the intended one point of truth (Ellis, 2019). Moreover, the proposed Principle 2 necessitates specific awareness of and adherence to the regulations and legislation that govern the extent of a practitioner’s investigative abilities.
This does not imply that the practitioner must comprehend the legal landscape of the crime they are investigating (though in most circumstances, it will be advantageous to their investigation). Still, it does imply that they must understand the legal powers that govern their conduct. It is their express responsibility to ensure that they always work within these limitations since any activity that strays outside of these bounds exposes practitioners to malpractice liability (Williams & Wienroth, 2014). This concept stops a practitioner from wandering into areas of problematic practice and then claiming ignorance of the consequences of their acts (Watherston et al., 2018). This requirement is becoming increasingly important as more investigations focus on non-local storage, where governance at the point of existence may not be adequately defined or understood.
Constraints Concerning the Policy
The absence of a working collaborative (governance) structure makes it significantly hard for ACPOS to meet its mandate effectively. A total of seven forces operate within the agency, all serving under distinct heads (Kebande et al., 2018). Each unit further operates almost independently in case of a disaster. Officers trained on catastrophe management and victim identification from each force often have to report to their independent heads, making the operation slow and discrete (Taylor et al., 2019). Karagiannis et al. (2021) suggest establishing a central governing team that takes care of all the DVI officers within the agency regardless of the setting. Doing that stands to improve collaboration among the forces and improve the agency’s effectiveness (Loveday, 2018). Section 22a of the ACPOS agreement requires each of the seven forces to establish a functional governance system that ensures smooth operations (ACPOS, 2011), as stated earlier. The section, however, significantly neglects the issue of DVI and the need for intra-forces coordination through operational, legal guidelines.
The lack of a central governing unit for ACPOS exposes the policy to critical shortcomings. Such include the absence of standardized training and financing of each force’s operations and equipment acquisition (Loveday, 2018). Consequently, Williams & Wienroth (2014) reports that some of the forces operating under the ACPOS’ DVI system lack some necessary tools and financial abilities to meet their obligations. The matter makes equal participation and standard operations hard to realize among the forces (Brookes & Thompson, 2019). Better still, the lack of standard operating procedures and a region-wide database, too, make ACPOS’ operations limited (Johnson & Riemen, 2019). Watherston et al. (208) argue that disaster victims from one region take time to be identified in another part of the U.K. due to the issues. Recognizing international victims involved in the U.K.-based disasters or U.K. citizens involved in calamities elsewhere worldwide is also challenging due to the ACPOS’ issues (Loveday, 2018). That is why the policy needs intensive and timely intervention to update its guidelines to match the current regional and global needs.
Lessons from the Interpol
ACPOS is an essential tool for the police serving within the U.K. region due to several aspects. The policy, for example, stands out in that it helps in setting background procedures for police officers concerned with disasters to work together, though not as they should (Johnson & Riemen, 2019). A look at the ACPOS influence relative to other regional or international police collaboration schemes aids a lot in identifying specific ways that ACPOS can improve, especially on the issue of biometrics and human identification (De Boer et al., 2019). For example, Interpol, a global criminal police society, provides how ACPOS should work per excellence.
There is a need for ACPOS to create a room for the U.K. police unit concerned with disaster management to share biometric information databases with other international bodies such as Interpol. Ellis (2019) says that possessing global biometric data will make identifying foreigners involved in disasters within the U.K. easy compared to presently. Succeeding in this area also implies an easy time for the international disaster management units to identify victims from the U.S. Karagiannis et al. (2021) note the need for nations to promote data sharing capabilities to make globalization sustainable. The suggestion, therefore, makes it necessary for all police organizations and policies touching on policing matters to collaborate. Such, therefore, necessitates that ACPOS adopt an international forensic information database to protect the U.K. citizens better and to become a significant player in the international disaster management platform.
Conclusion
One of the essential trade-offs in primary development is the quality assurance vs. practical enforcement trade-off, which requires striking a delicate balance between the two. Given their broad scope, the present ACPO rules may appear to offer nothing in terms of defining and guaranteeing acceptable forensic behavior in practice. As a result, it is unclear whether practitioners are merely paying respect to these principles and maybe not embracing their spirit of quality assurance, although often declaring adherence to them (and presumably keeping within their limitations given how widely they can be construed). This is in no way the fault of the practitioner or the principal creators; given their present scope of application, it is probable that all activity, save negligent actions, would have complied with ACPO. To have any weight in their application, principles must define and restrict the borders of acceptable behavior, which is an issue the existing principles may have.
References
ACPOS. (2011). Guidance on disaster victim identification. National Policing Improvement Agency.
Brookes, G. K., & Thompson, T. (2019). The impact of personal perception on the identification of tattoo pattern in human identification. Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, 64, 34-41. Web.
De Boer, H. H., Blau, S., Delabarde, T., & Hackman, L. (2019). The role of forensic anthropology in disaster victim identification (DVI): Recent developments and future prospects.Forensic Sciences Research, 4(4), 303-315. Web.
Ellis, P. (2019). Modern advances in disaster victim identification. Forensic Sciences Research, 4(4), 291–292. Web.
Ferguson, R. I., Renaud, K., Wilford, S., & Irons, A. (2020). PRECEPT: A framework for ethical digital forensics investigations.Journal of Intellectual Capital, 21(2), 257–290. Web.
Johnson, B. T., & Riemen, J. A. (2019). Digital capture of fingerprints in a disaster victim identification setting: A review and case study. Forensic Sciences Research, 4(4), 293-302. Web.
Karagiannis, C., Vergidis, K., & Kambourakis, G. (2021). Digital evidence and cloud forensics: Contemporary legal challenges and the power of disposal.Information (2078-2489), 12(5), 181. Web.
Kebande, V. R., & Venter, H. S. (2018). Novel digital forensic readiness technique in the cloud environment. Australian Journal of Forensic Sciences, 50(5), 552–591. Web.
Loveday, B. (2018). Police Scotland: Challenging the current democratic deficit in police governance and public accountability.Crime Prevention & Community Safety, 20(3), 154–167. Web.
Taylor, C., Woolnough, P. S., & Dickens, G. L. (2019). Adult missing persons: A concept analysis.Psychology, Crime & Law, 25(4), 396–419. Web.
Watherston, J., McNevin, D., Gahan, M. E., Bruce, D., & Ward, J. (2018). Current and emerging tools for the recovery of genetic information from postmortem samples: New directions for disaster victim identification. Forensic Science International: Genetics, 37, 270-282. Web.
Williams, R., & Wienroth, M. (2014). Identity, mass fatality and forensic genetics. New Genetics and Society, 33(3), 257-276. Web.