Forensic Identification System

With the development of the society, people, with unprecedented enthusiasm, are pursuing science and justness in all sorts of social affairs, such as administrative management, lawsuit and cognizance, legislation. The execution of public administrative laws has been placed great expectations, too. People foremost maintained in modem society, increasingly importance has been attached to medicolegal identification, the most powerful weapon for people to protect their own rights. The tasks of modern medical jurisprudence include: to provide scientific proofs for proving the criminal facts, approaching civil disputes correctly, sanitary authority's dealing with medical tangles, disposing serious accidents, and health and epidemic prevention department's taking order with infectious diseases or occupational poisoning, to offer constructive suggestions for lawmaking. Great changes have taken place since China's reform and opening-up. However, we have found that there is great disorder in medicolegal identification at the present stage. It should be attributed to the imperfect managerial system. Thus I did research on the managerial system and put forward many ideas based on the reality, trying to exert myself for the development of the society. In terms of its tasks, medicolegal identification, as the powerful weapon to protect the rights, is closely linked with people's life, and is paid much attention by the government and citizens themselves. The task of the government is to constitute correlative policies starting with the administration and to found the medicolegal identification system which is suitable for the national conditions of our country and integrates with the system of the world. Making a comprehensive survey of the development of the ancient medical jurisprudence in our country, we can find that the management of medicolegal identification was carried out by the government in every dynasty, and sometimes the identification was performed by the government officers. I think that we may benefit from the ancient medical jurisprudence from the followings: definitize the functions of medicolegal identification;provide proofs for the legal actions;give prominence to the evidential attribute of the medicolegal identification, nail down the personnel for medicolegal identification (the personnel for medicolegal identification throughthe ages were assumed or entrusted by the government officers);determine the supervisory system to the medicolegal identification. No matter in ancient times, or in modern times, medicolegal identification was always an integral part of the national administrative system, and its start-up program was always initiated by the government. The personnel for medicolegal identification were the government officers or the professional legal medical experts. In Song Dynasty, Any cadaver which was killed by violence should be examined. And for any cadaver whose cause was in suspicion by the family members, it should also be examined after demanding by the legal medical experts under the management of the officers. It must be admitted that China's medicolegal identification system has a long history, and it had been rather mature in ancient times. The scope of the medicolegal identification was defined clearly. The appointment and management of the personnel was prescribed, for example, it was stipulated in explicit terms in Statutes of the Qing Dynasty that the numbers, recruitment, study, examination, terms of employment and rewards and punishment of the coroners. And the county magistrates who didn't follow the stipulations would be punished. Therefore, these excellent administrative conceptions should be learned and used for reference in constituting the new administrative system of medical jurisprudence in China.At present, there are several different institutions for medicolegal identification: of the police force, public prosecution sectors, judicial sectors, judicial administration departments, the medical colleges, and even private institutions. These institutions were organized spontaneously and out of order without legal foundation. They are not under common ownership or management in our country. The technical levels of the the personnel for medicolegal identification and the equipments are quite unequal. At the same time, because of defects of medicolegal identification itself, each institution acts on his own will, each does what he thinks is right. Different institutions compete each other, do not support each other. It is ubiquitous for repeated identifications. Thus the medicolegal identification system was in a mess.The abuses of present medicolegal identification system: reestablishment of the institutions, decentralization of the personnel and weak technical force have influenced the quality of handling a case;the present medicolegal system prevents the construction of themedical examiners;the credit of the system await improvement.;the present administration system restricts the education of medical jurisprudence;the level of the medicolegal identification management is not high;there are problems in the acceptance of cases in medicolegal identification;the criteria of medicolegal identification are not identical.The follows are the characters of administration system on medicolegal identification: firstly, according to the management mode, there is the interaction between the government management and the professional self-discipline management. In the countries with Anglo-American law system, the first place was given to the professional self-discipline management and the secondary was to the government management;while in countries with Continentals law system, the functions of the government management are even more obvious. Secondly, according to the constitution of the subject, there are administrative policymaker, competent authority, and the unified evaluation institutions, which can be manifested apparently in Australia. Thirdly, according to the content in management, there are qualificatory recommendation system, pronunciamento system, enrollment system, authentication system of the evaluation institutions, unified technical standard and some data bases. Fourthly, according to the development tendency, the management develops toward the concentration. The installing character of the judicial expertise institutions of some foreign countries is that the establishments with power of investigation, generally, has its own identification institution. The police also has its own identification institution according to certain principle, but the scope and the objects of identification are different. In most countries, such as America, Japan, Australia, and Germany, autopsy cannot be performed by the police, but by the institutions in colleges or scientific research institutions, or specific medicolegal bureau. The procuratorial organizations in some countries may also establish identification institutions, such as Korea and Japan. It is rare to establish identification institutions in judicial sectors, only in Japan. There are specific identification sectors in colleges or scientific research institutions. Medicolegal bureaus and censorial supervisory medical department are set up in some countries to perform medicolegal identification. And the medicolegal identification is separated from other judicatory identification.Benefiting from the advanced administrative conceptions of the developed countries andthe excellent tradition of the ancient times in our country, we may establish firstly the general principle in the administrative mode of modern medicolegal identification, that is: the principle of cooperation with the criminal investigations, of the convenience of litigation, of the foundation of unified administrative institutions, of independent identification, of optimizing the allocation of resources, of the combination of concentration and separation.The administration of medicolegal identifications include the administration of the medicolegal identification institutions, the administration of the legal medical experts and the administration of the medicolegal identification procedures.It is advisable to take the unified administrative institution in foundation of medicolegal identification system in our country, to adopt the combination of judicial authority and social work in the identifiable subject, to employ unified qualification management system in the management of personnel for medicolegal identification. The unified administrative institution should and must be founded in our country. Because medicolegal identification is the basis of justice, and in view of the faultiness of credit mechanism, the unified administrative institution should be founded in the administrative body. The methods to perfect the current identification institutions and optimize the current sources: to support the development of the identification institutions in investigative establishments and optimization the resource allocation of the social medicolegal identification institutions;to set up territorial medicolegal central laboratories for the realization of resource sharing;not to establish the medicolegal identification institutions in adjudication organ to separate the adjudgment and the identification.The following designs should be considered in management of personnel of medicolegal identification: professionalization of the personnel;unification the examination and checking system of occupational qualifications;unification the management system of practicing requirements;perfection continuous education and training;initiation the promotion system of the practicing legal medical experts;establishment the rewards and punishment and supervisory systems for the personnel. The current operational mechanism in medicolegal identification should be reformed, and the new one should be founded.In identification procedure, it is advisable to adopt stitution that is the initial identification,review identification, and the last consultation identification by the experts.The above conclusions are drawn after comparable research on the administrative conceptions of the developed countries and the excellent tradition of the ancient times in our country, combined with the fact of medicolegal identification in our country.