California Department of Justice
We are the real-life Crime Scene Investigators (CSI).
The police focus on tracking down, interrogating, and arresting suspects; the District Attorney concentrates on prosecuting those who are indicted; we concentrate on the evidence used to make those arrests and prosecutions.
The more than 200 people who make up the Association of Criminalists for the California Department of Justice (AC-DOJ) perform a variety of highly specialized forensic work that local and federal agencies have come to rely on in the pursuit of criminals within their jurisdictions.
Our members divide roughly into 10 specialties:
- Crime scene response (homicides, sexual assaults)
- DNA (processing and database)
- Blood alcohol
- Clandestine lab response
- Firearms and tool marks
- Latent prints (fingerprints)
- Digital evidence (mobile device & computer analysis)
- Questioned-document examinations (forgeries)
- Solid-dosage drug analysis
- Trace analysis
- Toxicology
We are the crime labs for 48 of California’s 58 counties and our members’ testimony in trials is often the make-or-break moment in a case.
AC-DOJ Board:
AC-DOJ Videos:
Cold Cases Solved With the Help of DOJ Criminalists:
- DNA Helps Solve 1973 Cold Case Murder
- Suspect Identified in Two Murders that Have Gone Unsolved for 41 Years
- New DNA Technology Credited for Arrest & Conviction of Stockton Woman’s Killer
- Suspect Identified in 1985 Danville Cold Case
- DNA Criminalists Assist in Solving 25-Year Old Rape and Murder Case
- Suspect in 41-Year-old Murder Case Identified Through Familial DNA
- COLD CASE: Two Cousins Sentenced in the 1973 Murders of Two Olivehurst Girls
- Cold Case: Suspect in 2004 Rape Arrested in Santa Cruz County
- Life In Prison For Killer In West Sacramento Cold Case Homicide
- When Family, Friends & Forensic Scientists Don’t Give Up
- Murder Suspect Arrested in 1988 Santa Barbara County Homicide Case
- Criminalist’s Work at Ripon DOJ Lab Leads to Suspected Killer’s Arrest
- The Role of California DOJ Criminalists in the Capture of the Grim Sleeper
