A crime laboratory - often shortened to crime lab - is a scientific laboratory, using primarily forensic science for the purpose of examining evidence from criminal cases.
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A typical crime lab has two sets of personnel:
In the United States, crime labs may be publicly or privately operated, although private laboratories typically do not respond to crime scenes to collect evidence. Public crime labs are organized at the city, county, state, or national level. A law enforcement agency that does not operate its own crime lab usually has free access to a higher level laboratory for analysis of their evidence.
The term "crime lab" has become a part of popular culture, largely due to the TV dramas. Some of the more famous shows are:
Several non-fiction television programs, document the resolution of criminal cases based on the scientific analysis of the evidence: