Forensic Quality Management and Era of Standardization: Where the Rubber Meets the Road in Challenging Environments

Quality management in forensic science has evolved from initial conceptual approaches to the development of international frameworks that foster consistency and accountability. The introduction of industry models, focused on control and uniformity, facilitated traceability and comparability. However, these models also generated problems with the interpretive and contextual nature of forensic practice. International standards have helped formalize procedures, but they can also limit quality to compliance and give a misleading impression of reliability. Therefore, forensic quality must be conceived as a collection of different components. The Sydney Declaration is a foundational framework, as it lays the scientific, epistemological, and ethical foundations that ensure consistency and rigor in diverse situations, including challenging environments. Standardization, meanwhile, represents an operational dimension that ensures procedural consistency, transparency, and comparability essential to institutional practice. While these dimensions may seem different, they work together: The first defines the foundations and principles of forensic science, and the second provides forensic systems with the operational tools.