CSI Atlanta by Mary Dutta

True-crime documentaries. Podcasts. CSI. Forensic science is having a moment.

Fiction writers are all over the trend as well. This October will bring the twenty-ninth installment in Patricia Cornwell’s long-running novel series featuring medical examiner Kay Scarpetta. Another bestselling crime writer, Val McDermid, learned so much researching her novels that she wrote Forensics, a non-fiction book which won an Anthony Award and was a finalist for the Edgar Award as well.

You can imagine, then, how much I enjoyed the “Crime Lab 101” presentation that an Assistant Director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s Division of Forensic Sciences gave to the Atlanta chapter of Sisters in Crime. The talk was fascinating, especially about the ways reality differed from the portrayal of forensics in the fictitious worlds we consume and create.

For instance, while fictional characters send evidence to “the lab,” the GBI Forensic Services actually has seven separate locations, each of which handles specific tasks. One might handle toxicology and chemistry, while another examines trace evidence, or firearms, or fire debris. And unlike on TV, forensic scientists are not conveniently experts in literally everything investigators ask them about. In the real world, a specialist in fingerprints does not also have specialized knowledge of paint chips, fire accelerants, serology, or other types of evidence.

The laboratory set design in films and television does sometimes feature the actual machines used by forensic scientists. But while the GBI embraces evolving technology, human expertise still plays a central role in their work. Shell casings are compared by human eye, not AI. And the agency has paused tire tread analysis for the time being because the two people who possessed the requisite skills left the bureau and have not yet been replaced.

I was surprised to learn that while the GBI labs have lockboxes where law enforcement can drop off evidence in person, much of what the labs receive arrives through the same delivery services the rest of us use for more mundane purposes—UPS, FedEx, and the USPS. None of them provide any specialized or streamlined channels for handling evidence.

However requests for evidence examination arrive, the forensic labs received over 114,000 of them in 2024. So those phone calls fictional detectives are always making asking for a rush on results? Not very realistic. For a call like that to have any effect, it would need to come from the governor’s office.

Like their fictional counterparts, GBI scientists do testify in court, for both the prosecution and the defense. But their only role is to truthfully describe the testing they did and the results they found. They never speculate on guilt or innocence, or suggest theories of what might have happened during the commission of a crime.

At the end of her talk, the speaker shared that she was inspired to go into forensic science by watching Quincy, a late 70s television show featuring a medical examiner. It’s fun to think that our own works, whatever license we take with the realities of criminal investigation, might also spark an interest in a reader that leads them to solving real-world crimes as successfully as we solve the ones we make up.