Responding to the American Academy of Forensic Sciences vision, mission, and values statements: Comments, revisions, and proposed actions.

•We call for revisions to the current AAFS vision, mission, and values statements.•Truly aspirational statements will provide guiding principles for forensic scientists.•Revisions should meaningfully engage with issues of diversity and equity.

Teaching forensic science under conditions of humanitarian crisis: Toward a critically-informed experiential approach.

This article examines the use of critical pedagogy practices for teaching students the forensic science of migrant death and identification in the US borderland. Critical pedagogy, a philosophy of education that centers issues of social justice and human rights in the classroom, insists that teaching is inherently political, and challenges students to recognize and address power structures which perpetuate an unjust status quo. Drawing examples from qualitative data gathered during two field seasons in South Texas with the University of Indianapolis Forensic Science Team and narrative analysis of students team members' daily reflections about their work within structures designed to address the US border crisis, this article illuminates challenges and possibilities for teaching in learning in a context of mass violence.

DNA recovery and analysis from skeletal material in modern forensic contexts.

The generation of a DNA profile from skeletal remains is an important part of the identification process in both mass disaster and unidentified person cases. Since bones and teeth are often the only biological materials remaining after exposure to environmental conditions, intense heat, certain traumatic events and in cases where a significant amount of time has passed since the death of the individual, the ability to purify large quantities of informative DNA from these hard tissues would be beneficial. Since sampling the hard tissues for genetic analysis is a destructive process, it is important to understand those environmental and intrinsic factors that contribute to DNA preservation.

Could Secondary DNA Transfer Falsely Place Someone at the Scene of a Crime?

The occurrence of secondary DNA transfer has been previously established. However, the transfer of DNA through an intermediary has not been revisited with more sensitive current technologies implemented to increase the likelihood of obtaining results from low-template/low-quality samples. This study evaluated whether this increased sensitivity could lead to the detection of interpretable secondary DNA transfer profiles.