As the cornerstone for our evidence management training and consulting programs, the Evidence Management Institute has adopted a set of standards and best practices designed to provide a strong foundation for evidence management across the industry. These standards form the basis of everything we do at EMI and are a critical component of in our mission to change the culture of evidence management across the justice system.

The standards and practices in these 10 chapters can help your agency build a sustainable baseline for your evidence management operations. It’s true that no two agencies are alike, but it’s equally true that successful evidence management operations share some very similar characteristics that can be applied regardless of scale or scope.

These are intended to be live utility documents; our goal is to continue building on this solid foundation by updating and reviewing our standards on a continual basis. We want them to be useful to you as you assess your own operations and make decisions for your agency. At the Evidence Management Institute, we’re never happy with the status quo. We’re already working on a searchable version of our standards to help you find the information you need, exactly when you need it.

We invite you to dig in and let us know what you think. We welcome suggestions for improvement and will carefully consider and recognize individual contributors who help us in our mission to build the best set of standards, practices and information that the industry has to offer.