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Chain of Custody

What a custody record contains, how a form is completed and by whom, and what follows when there is a gap in the chain — for physical items and for digital evidence.

About chain of custody

What the record actually is

Chain of custody is the written history of an item of evidence: who took it, when, from where, who has held it since, and what condition it was in at each handoff. It is less a single document than an unbroken sequence of entries, each naming a releasing party and a receiving party. The record exists to answer a question asked much later — is this the same item, in the same state, as the one that was collected.

Why the gaps are what get attacked

An interval nobody can account for is the opening a custody challenge is built on. Courts have generally treated an incomplete record as a question of weight rather than an automatic bar, but the practical effect is similar either way: the person who kept the record spends the hearing explaining it instead of explaining the evidence. Gaps are cheap to prevent at the moment of transfer and expensive to account for years afterwards.

Physical items and digital evidence diverge

For a sealed bag, possession and integrity are close to the same fact — the seal is intact or it is not. For a file they come apart. A copy is indistinguishable from its original, possession is rarely exclusive, and what shows the contents are unchanged is a digest recorded at a known time. A custody record for digital evidence therefore has to carry an integrity value alongside the signatures, and has to account for every working copy made along the way.

Every transfer described above is one form and two signatures. CustodyTrack records them as tamper-evident entries that anyone can check afterwards.

Published guides

Start here

What Is Chain of Custody? A Complete Guide

Answers the question “what is chain of custody”.

Also planned for this hub

The full outline this subject is being written to, so you can see what is covered and what is still coming. The 8 titles below are not yet written and are not links.

  • Chain of Custody Audit Checklist: What to Review
  • Paper vs Electronic Chain of Custody Records
  • How Long Must Evidence Be Retained?
  • Common Chain of Custody Mistakes and How They Surface
  • Body-Worn Camera Video: Custody From Upload to Disclosure
  • Submitting Evidence to a Crime Laboratory
  • Free Evidence Management Software: What Actually Exists
  • How to Teach Chain of Custody: A Classroom Exercise

Each is listed above as a link once written — subscribe on the guide index to be told when they publish.

Common questions

Who signs a chain of custody form?
Both sides of every handoff: the party releasing the item and the party receiving it. A transfer recorded by one side alone leaves the other free to say they never took it, or took something else. Where a procedure calls for a witness, that signature is a third line rather than a substitute for either of the first two. Who Is Responsible for Maintaining Chain of Custody? →
What are the most common chain of custody errors?
Transfers signed by only one party, times recorded without a zone, item descriptions that would fit three items in the same case, entries written days after the event, and working copies made with no entry of their own. None of these are exotic, and all of them are visible on a review of the file — which is why an audit pass before disclosure is worth the hour it costs.
How long does evidence have to be kept?
There is no single period. Retention is set by statute for particular evidence types, by an agency's own schedule, and by the status of the case, and the clock can restart. One point is easy to miss: the custody record generally has to outlive the item it describes, because the question asked afterwards is what happened to it.
Can a third party verify a record without access to the system?
That is the test worth applying to any custody system, because a record only settles an argument if the other side can check it themselves. CustodyTrack records are verifiable from a code alone, at no cost and without an account, and verifying discloses nothing about the item — the service holds hash values, not contents. Chain of Custody Software: How to Evaluate It →

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