Forensics

Murder in mind: Yorkshire forensics site’s unique approach to catching killers

Despite a new national scandal, a unique partnership between Yorkshire’s police forces and top scientists is helping to crack the county’s most serious crimes. Chris Burn reports. The use of private firms to carry out forensics work for criminal investigations is itself under the microscope after hundreds of inquiries were thrown into doubt last month.
But officials in Yorkshire say they have cracked the case when it comes to splitting work between the public and private sector, with a unique £21m facility in Wakefield helping to solve dozens of murders and other serious crimes in the county over the last five years. The facility was originally created by West Yorkshire Police and now acts as a base for the forensics investigations of all the Yorkshire forces, as well as being the home of LGC, the private firm which does the vast majority of the specialist scientific work needed.