Report

Concerns about the adequacy of medicolegal death investigation in the United States have been raised for many decades. The concerns have been voiced by all the constituencies that have a stake in the accuracy of data related to circumstances of death and in the official determinations based on them. For the criminal justice system, concerns about the adequacy of data about deaths merge with general concerns about all aspects of forensic science.

Those concerns led the National Institute of Justice to ask the Institute of Medicine to conduct a workshop on the medicolegal death investigation system in the United States. IOM appointed a committee to plan the workshop with the advice and assistance of NIJ, staff of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other interested constituencies. The workshop was held on March 24-25, 2003, and this report summarizes the ideas and observations expressed at the workshop.

Presentations and opinions expressed at the workshop demonstrated clearly that the current practices of medicolegal death investigation in this country are in substantial need of improvement. The workshop discussions also showed that accurate data on the circumstances and causes of death (and the identification of human remains) are, in the language of economists, a valuable public good and that much of their value accrues to the benefit of the nation as a whole. To rectify the many deficiencies of the system, it will be necessary to solve many problems, including fundamental issues of financing. The workshop was a starting point for further study and, hopefully, for eventual reform.