The Invisible Essential Employee
Forensic scientists are essential workers. So why doesn’t anyone act like it?
Let me tell you something you already know: forensic scientists are essential workers1. The federal government knows it too, or at least it says it does. The Department of Homeland Security says so. CISA says so: they specifically placed forensic laboratory services under “Law Enforcement, Public Safety, and Other First Responders” in their essential critical infrastructure guidance. The CDC said so during COVID. The Bureau of Labor Statistics classifies forensic science under “Protective Service Occupations,” which is defined by its role in maintaining public order and safety.
Everyone agrees on paper. The problem is what happens when the paper meets the paycheck.
When “Essential” Is Just a Word
During COVID, most forensic laboratories were mandated to remain open. Courts needed them. Prosecutors needed them. The criminal justice system doesn’t get to pause because there’s a pandemic. Analysts processing biological samples, like DNA, toxicology, the whole megillah, faced exposure risks that mirrored what healthcare workers were dealing with. In some cases they were doing healthcare work, running COVID-19 samples when public health labs were overwhelmed.
And yet. Police and EMS personnel got prioritized for PPE, for hazard pay, for early vaccination. Many forensic staff were excluded or delayed. Some labs were closed entirely, employees furloughed or sent home, while the sworn officers in the same building kept working. In some jurisdictions forensic scientists were classified with “general administrative staff” for benefit purposes. Administrative staff.
That’s not a classification error. That’s a value judgment2.
The Captive Profession Problem
Sociologists have a term for this: “captive profession.” It refers to any field where specialized expertise is structurally subordinate to another organization’s priorities. An example is sonographers, the technicians who operate the sonogram instruments that image your insides with sound. They hand off their results to a medical doctor, who uses those and other results to render a comprehensive diagnosis. A sonographer’s career depends entirely on the medical profession: they do the work, but they don’t control it. No doctors, no sonographers.
Forensic scientists are similar but different. Most are employed by police departments or sheriff’s offices, embedded in a law enforcement hierarchy, with sworn officers at the top. They are civilian staff, including people with advanced degrees in chemistry, biology, and genetics, in supporting roles. Bechky’s Blood, Powder, and Residue (2021) documents this in granular detail: analysts must navigate a rank-and-command culture where scientific judgment is frequently set aside by policing priorities that have nothing to do with evidence or science. Where forensic scientists differ from most captive professions is that they are held captive by a profession that is outside their knowledge domain3. Sonographers and medical doctors both work within the medical knowledge domain; forensic scientists work in the science domain4 and police work within the law enforcement domain.
And those priorities don’t align, obviously. Police work runs on urgency, visible presence, and fast response. Forensic science runs on validation, documentation, and the kind of deliberate procedure that doesn’t look impressive on a bodycam. Patrol officers make arrests and prosecutors get convictions that show up on the evening news. A DNA analyst who correctly excludes an innocent suspect from investigation never makes the news at all, which is exactly as it should be, but it also means their contribution is invisible5. And invisible work gets cut first.
Let’s Talk Numbers
It’s not just about how we’re valued; it’s also about how we’re valued. The pay disparities are real and the math is not subtle. At the federal level, entry-level special agents start around $47,000; experienced agents can clear $117,000. Forensic technicians?6 Entry-level around $45,500, top end around $100,000. Doesn’t sound too bad, right? Close enough.
Now add the Law Enforcement Availability Pay bonus7, typically 25% on top of base salary for being “continuously available.” That pushes entry-level agent pay to around $58,750 and top pay to $146,250. The same forensic scientist technician gets none of that.
The same structural disparity exists at state and local levels, just with different numbers. And it matters for more than morale. During fiscal crunches, police officers and firefighters are often protected from furloughs by collective bargaining agreements. Civilian forensic staff are not. When budgets tighten, the people running the DNA database and processing the firearms evidence are the first ones put on the sidelines. And, guess what? The people not sidelined are still collecting evidence and submitting it.
What Happens When You Underfund Science
The systemic consequences of treating forensic scientists as auxiliary staff are not abstract. Backlogs are not a warehousing problem (I’ve argued this elsewhere) they’re a dynamic systems problem, driven by the imbalance between processing capacity and incoming caseload8. Cut staff, lose capacity, watch the backlog compound: Project FORESIGHT has determined that for every 1% a lab reduces turnaround time in, let’s say DNA analysis, submissions go up by 1.25%. Hence, dynamic system—it’s fighting back, as it were. Plus, suspects stay at large, defendants wait months or years for results their constitutional rights entitle them to and, adding injury to injury, victims get nothing.
Agencies under budget pressure often turn to vendor-supplied shortcuts, with front-end technology like roadside drug tests and handheld chemical kits. Unvalidated methods adopted because they’re fast, not because they’re accurate. The record on these is mixed at best and catastrophic at worst, with false positives, wrongful arrests, wrongful convictions, and expensive litigation that costs local governments far more than the proper lab analysis would have. Outsourcing is a necessary evil but doesn’t fix anything in the long run: You’re still inefficient and will end up with a backlog again. See? Dynamic system.
Here’s the thing: The return on investment for forensic science is, in fact, enormous. Subsequent work on CODIS, DNA databases, and clearance rates has only reinforced it9. Cutting forensic science to save money is like canceling building inspections to save money: you save a little now, you pay a lot later. We should be able to make crazy strong arguments for the resources we need. Every other government agency is vying for the same dollars but we can prove what the citizens will get if we get the money.
The human cost inside laboratories is equally serious, if less visible. Experienced analysts are leaving for private industry and healthcare, where pay is better and professional status is clearer10. Each one who leaves takes institutional knowledge with them and worsens the workload for everyone who stays. Attrition in forensic science is not a coincidence; it’s the predictable result of years of structural undervaluation. People are the largest expense a lab has.
Toward Something Better
A few models worth noting. The Virginia Department of Forensic Science sits within the Department of Criminal Justice Services, with a Director appointed by and reporting directly to the Governor, not the state police. The Houston Forensic Science Center is an independent local government corporation, governed by a nine-member board appointed by the mayor and confirmed by city council, completely separate from police oversight. There are other examples in the U.S. as well. In Western Australia, two separate government laboratories provide biology and chemistry forensic services for the state, while police handle crime scene, fingerprinting, and firearms. Different structures, same principle: scientific work governed by scientific priorities, not policing priorities.
These aren’t perfect arrangements. None of this is simple. But the direction is clear. Until forensic science is recognized as a coequal pillar of justice, with the classification, compensation, and labor protections that recognition and autonomy requires, the field will continue to struggle with the same pressures it has always faced: invisible work, invisible budgets, invisible workers.
The alternative is to keep pretending that “essential” is just a word you put in a guidance document and never have to act on. We’ve been doing that for too long.
This post draws on a Perspective article I co-authored with Greg LaBerge, published in Forensic Science International: Synergy (2026), open access, free to download. Disclaimer: As Editor-in-Chief, I had no administrative role in the processing of that manuscript.
Not that there’s anything wrong with being administrative staff; they are the gears that make the organization work, after all. It was just as big an affront to discount the administrative staff as it was the scientific staff. I mean, try buying something without without the admin. Good luck.
I’ve been wracking my brain for other examples of ex parte captive professions and the only one I can think of is intelligence analysts (who report to military, government, etc). Maybe I’m missing the obvious; if you think of one, let me know.
Arguably.
It’s the old joke: Doing a good job around here is like peeing yourself in a dark suit: You get a warm feeling but no one notices.
There’s that word again. The Bureau of Labor Statistics calls all of us “technicians.” Ugh. So do attorneys, police, judges, etc. because it’s a good way to express the asymmetrical power relationship we swim in. There’s a whole mishegas around the scientist-technician thing. I’m writing a paper on how we got in this gray area, limbo situation; as a start, read Latour and Woolgar (sorry).
Often called AUO: Automatic Uncontrollable Overtime. Many federal agents get AUO because they are “always on call.” They get an additional 25% tacked onto their salary but may get called out at 2 am. Some non-federal law enforcement get similar bonuses. Scientists? Not so much.
Houck, M.M. (2020). Backlogs are a dynamic system, not a warehousing problem. Forensic Science International: Synergy, 2, 317–324.
See also Doleac (2017) on DNA databases and crime; Wickenheiser (2021) on Project Resolution cost-benefit analysis; and Ludwig (2016) on evaluating forensic science value (all cited in the paper).
Data from a recent ASCLD workshop I was in indicated that of new hires, 40% didn’t complete training (ouch) and many left for better paying or non-forensic jobs.