In Germany, the forensic institutes and investigation centers are mainly integrated into official institutes, into the structures of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and the 16 State Criminal Police Offices. An exception are the German forensic medicine institutes (which can also be connected to hospitals in the federal states) and the forensic psychiatry, with the disability assessment and detection of mental or neurological disorders. Every forensic institute has a forensic department of technical formtracks. Usually engineers or occasionally detective officers with technical training work here. It is irrelevant whether the employees are police officers or government employees. Both groups of employees work on the same cases. Depending on the federal state, there is a different division of the department for technical formtracks. A common division of departments is: • Department for shoe,- tire- and gloveprints as well as clothing identification • Department for toolmarks and fracture matching, glass breakage examinations, lock and key examinations, door, gate and window examinations, crime scene reconstruction, bite marks • Department for vehicle examinations and visualization of removed embossing marks / serial number restoration In most federal states, forensic engineers have to work on all just mentioned disciplines. The field of weapons, ammunition and pyrotechnic items is also part of the engineering sciences, but was removed from the technical formtracks in Germany in 1980 due to the less intensive comparative work and the legal case assessment.

There are also other forensic departments in the forensic institutes in Germany.

Of course, all other forensic specialist areas in German crime techniques are also processed, which are listed here for completeness: • Department of weapons, ammunition and pyrotechnic items • Department of Classic Forensic Sciences dactyloscopy, face recognition and comparison, handwriting examinations, voice analysis • Department of forensic documents, passports and typescripts • Department of Natural Sciences chemistry (toxicology, narcotics investigation, material determination), biology (DNA analysis, blood pattern analysis, hair analysis, soil sample analysis, fiber traces), physics (electrics) • Department of Forensic Information and Communication / IT-Forensic computer and disk forensics, cybercrime, cell evaluation, telecommunication monitoring These police departments do not play a significant role on the following pages. The pages of this webpage deal exclusively with the individual subject areas of the technical formtracks. Germany also strives to validate all work techniques in the technical formtracks. The report of the Executive Office of the US President Obama (President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology) PCAST ​​from September 2016 has also been noted in Germany. Although German forensic scientists are not yet as far advanced as their Dutch neighbours, who have been refining their forensic methods for years and are working on new explanatory approaches to make the subject areas more scientific, Germany has always attached great importance to empirical basic research and test series. All forensic institutes in Germany had to accredit some specialist departments before 2016 due to a European initiative. This means that all specialist departments (including the technical formtracks) are generally subject to a QM system in accordance with DIN EN ISO/IEC 17025 or 17020. Almost half of the departments in the technical formtracks (Hesse, Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Brandenburg, Lower Saxony, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, BKA) are directly accredited, with a few exceptions in eastern Germany, the rest are ready for accreditation and work with QM-approved procedures and work instructions, for which the procedures must also be validated. There is an EU-wide assessment scale that should be adhered to by the experts. In order to demonstrate the state of the art and the same way of working, most departments undergo laboratory comparative examinations or proficiency tests. Some German institutes also take the tests of American companies, which unfortunately often have proven errors and cause these institutes considerable problems in the German QM system. In addition, there is training throughout Germany in all departments of the technical formtracks (except in North Rhine-Westphalia in the field of shoeprints). The experts undergo the same training and must pass the same test. Please see the section forensic examiner .