Wen Sara Schreiber was in college pondering career choices, lawyer crossed her mind.

As fate would have it, Schreiber, a chemistry major, had an internship with the Wisconsin State Crime Laboratory the summer before graduating. The rest, as they say, is history.

Schreiber is among an elite core of government professionals providing an invaluable public service. She's a forensic scientist. It's her job to examine physical evidence for law enforcement agencies, maintain detailed records of tests and conclusions, and, if necessary, testify in court about her findings.

There are fewer than 6,000 forensic scientists, often called analysts or examiners, staffing the country's 351 publicly funded crime labs, according to a 2002 census of forensic crime labs released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) in February 2005. According to the BJS, these labs received nearly 2.7 million new cases in 2002, almost half of which were requests for analysis of controlled substances. Toxicology-the examination of body fluids and tissues for the presence and quantity of controlled substances-was the second-most requested function, followed by latent prints.

The job is a "good mix between the science and the law," says Schreiber, a member of the Wisconsin Science Professionals, one of AFT-Wisconsin's six public employee bargaining units. The toughest part of her job, Schreiber says, is communicating the evidence analyses and the science behind it to a lay jury, particularly when multiple controlled substances are present.

Compensation commensurate with supply and demand

The U.S. Department of Labor predicts that 10,000 new forensic scientists will be needed by 2012, according to Forensic Science Communications, a journal published by FBI Laboratory personnel.

Whether that is achieved is largely dependent on government budgets that recognize that salaries and benefits in the public sector must be competitive with the private sector in order to compete for science professionals.

According to the 2006 AFT Public Employees Compensation Survey, median salaries for state-employed forensic scientists range from $38,770 to $60,984 through March 1, 2006.

The median salary in the private sector for a chemist or a biologist, on the other hand, was $61,698 and $63,067 respectively, according to the survey.

The BJS is expected to release an updated census of publicly funded crime labs later this year.

In the meantime, the 2002 census is available at the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs' Web site at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/cpffcl02.pdf.

Also, the National Academy of Sciences has convened a forensic science committee to, among other things, assess the present and future resource needs of the forensic community. The committee held its first meeting in January 2007 in Washington, D.C. For more information, visit the current projects section of the National Academy of Sciences at http://www8.nationalacademies.org/cp/ .