Division of Crime Laboratories

The division of crime laboratories became a very important part in forensics over the past few years. Crime laboratories can be found at the federal, state and or local level. The FBI maintains the largest crime laboratory in the world through the Department of Justice. Whatever can not be done the police headquarters is sent to a specific or larger crime lab for further testing. The four major crime labs are the physical science, firearms/ballistics, document analysis, and biology unit. Within these specific crime lab divisions are scientists that specialize in certain fields of work: geologists, ballistics and linguistics specialists and serologists (Kurland 22).