Chain Of Custody

Many different people participate in the process of collecting, transporting, analyzing, and reporting on particular samples and data. You should maintain a chronological record of who has been in possession of the samples and what analyses have been performed on them. Following chain-of-custody procedures when handling samples and data helps provide assurance that they have not been tampered with.

The chain of custody requires that from the moment the evidence is collected, every transfer of evidence from person to person be documented and that it be provable that nobody else could have accessed that evidence. It is best to keep the number of transfers as low as possible.

Files:

The following document is in Microsoft Excel format, and the program Excel is needed to open it.
Chain of Custody (XLS)

The following document is in PDF format, and the program Adobe Reader is needed to open it.
Chain of Custody (PDF)