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CustodyTrack.io

For instructors

A chain of custody exercise your class can run this week.

A realistic evidence-handling scenario, an instructor key, and a grading rubric — three PDFs, free, no sign-up and no email address. Your students document the scenario in real chain-of-custody records that anyone can verify, including you, and including the student sitting next to them.

Get the classroom packSee what the exercise is

What it takes to adopt this: one class, and nothing else.

Accounts for the whole cohort

Students sign up with their university email address and the academic allowance is applied to the account automatically. There is no code for you to distribute, no roster to upload, and no cap on how many of them do it.

No card, no procurement

No card is collected at sign-up, so nothing can be charged. No purchase order, no quote, no seat count, and nothing for you to take to a committee before week three.

Records anyone can check

Every record a student creates can be verified by someone with no account and no access to it — which is what lets you set an exercise where students check each other's work rather than taking it on trust. Try the verifier.

The exercise

A fictional internal investigation at a company called Meridian Analytics. A departing employee is suspected of copying a client dataset to removable media; your student is the examiner sent to preserve the laptop and whatever came with it. Three evidence items, eight custody events over six days, and a set of working notes that are imperfect in the way real notes are.

What students submit

  1. A custody record per item. Including deciding how many items there are, which is not the number the handout gives them.
  2. A complete transfer log. Every release matched by a receipt, with a named person on each side wherever one exists.
  3. An acquisition note. Tool, write-protection status, digest algorithm, digest value, and who computed it when.
  4. A discrepancy note. Two hashes of the same drive do not match. What that establishes, what it does not, and what happens next.
  5. A short authentication memo. 400 to 600 words tying their own record to FRE 901(a), the 901(b) illustrations that apply, and 902(14) where they rely on a digest.

The three problems it plants

An exercise where everything goes right teaches students to fill in fields. Each of these is a documentation decision with a right answer and a tempting wrong one, and each is analyzed in the instructor key.

Custody starts before the examiner arrives.
An IT administrator moved the laptop and wrote nothing down. The gap cannot be closed, and the exercise does not want it closed — it wants an entry that is honest about the boundary of the student's own knowledge. Students who write a precise time they cannot know have made the error that ends an examiner's usefulness as a witness.
A signature that cannot be obtained.
The evidence locker register normally takes two signatures and only one person is in the building. Both tempting answers — waiting and dating it yesterday, or not logging the items in at all — are worse than the irregularity itself.
A hash mismatch the student caused.
A first read of a flash drive was performed without a write blocker; a second read behind one produces a different digest. This is the heart of the exercise, and the failing answer is the tidy one: delete the first image, report the pair that matches, move on.

Download the classroom pack

Three PDFs, Rev. 1.0 (September 2026). No account, no email address, no “unlock” step. Each file carries its own license, so it still says what you may do with it after it has been forwarded to a colleague or posted on an LMS.

Student assignment brief

PDF · 5 pages

A fictional internal-investigation scenario with three evidence items, eight custody events, and three planted problems the student has to document rather than tidy away.

Instructor answer key

PDF · 7 pages

The model record, what each planted problem tests, the errors students actually make, and how to run the exercise in one class or over a week.

Grading rubric

PDF · 5 pages

Weighted criteria with four performance levels each, an at-a-glance summary table, and notes on adapting the weighting to your course.

Running it in one class

The take-home version with all five deliverables is what the rubric is weighted for. The 90-minute in-class version drops the memo and redistributes its marks; the key gives the weighting for both, plus a paired version and a two-session lab.

  1. Read the key, adapt the brief. The scenario is licensed for adaptation and the key lists five variants if you want one your students cannot look up.
  2. Have students create their accounts before the session. It takes an email address and a password, and it is the only step that costs class time if it is left until the day.
  3. Hand out the brief and the rubric together. Three rubric criteria can be capped at zero, all three for honesty rather than skill, and all three are stated in the brief before the work starts. None of them is a trap.
  4. Collect exported PDFs, or verification links. Whichever fits your LMS. Verification needs no account, so a marker outside your institution can check a record too.
Create a free accountOr take the printable blank form

Academy on a shared police or government address?

University addresses, and police academies with a web domain of their own, are recognized when a student signs up. Many academies don't have one: instructors and recruits use the address of the force or the ministry. We can't recognize those domains automatically, because doing so would cover everyone at the force rather than the academy.

If that is you, ask here. A person reads each request. If it is approved, the academic allowance is applied to the CustodyTrack account registered to the work address you give — once that address has been confirmed — so use the address you will sign up with. Each recruit or instructor asks for their own account.

We use what you send only to review the request and reply to it.

Questions faculty ask

Is this really free, or is there a bill later?
The three PDFs are free, and the license you receive on download does not expire — no account and no email address are asked for. A student account costs nothing either, and we never ask for a card, so there is nothing on file that could be charged. Nobody moves onto a paid plan without deliberately buying one.
Do my students need a credit card?
No. Sign-up takes an email address and a password. There is no card field, no trial that converts, and no purchase order for you to raise.
What do students actually get?
An account with an allowance of chain-of-custody records generous enough to complete this exercise several times over, exported without a watermark. Custody transfers and public verification carry no per-use charge on any account, including accounts that are not part of any academic program.
What happens to my students' data?
Each student signs up for their own account and their records belong to them, not to you and not to their institution. There is no team or organization feature, so you get no administrator view of their work — if you need to see it, ask them for the exported PDF or a verification link, which is also the simplest way to keep graded work inside your own LMS. Students can delete their accounts themselves at any time.
Can I use this in a graded course?
Yes, including a course students pay for. The license on each PDF permits reproduction and adaptation for teaching provided the credit line stays on the document. You do not need to ask us, and you do not need to tell us.
The answer key is public. Can my students download it?
Yes, and you should assume they will. The exercise is built for that: the two heaviest rubric criteria are the discrepancy analysis and the authentication memo, and the key sets out the points a strong answer makes rather than writing either one out. Every submission is also produced under identifiers generated in the student's own account, so copied work is visible without any special effort. The key includes five variants if you would rather assess on something your students have not read.
What happens at the end of the term?
Nothing switches off. A student allowance runs for a year from the day it is applied rather than to the end of a semester, and records outlive the allowance — verification is free, needs no account, and does not consume anything. Students keep their accounts after your course ends, which is rather the point.
How long will the academic program itself run?
The program is reviewed periodically and may change, or stop accepting new grants, with notice. A change applies to new grants only: an allowance already issued runs to its stated expiry, so nobody loses access retroactively, and the classroom PDFs are licensed to you regardless.
Do I have to use CustodyTrack to run the exercise?
No. The scenario, the key and the rubric work with paper forms or with another tool, and there is a free printable chain-of-custody form on this site that needs no account at all. What CustodyTrack adds is that a student's record can be checked by someone who does not trust them, which is the part of the subject that is hardest to teach on paper.
Do you need a contract, a purchase order, or a data-processing agreement?
None of the above, and that cuts both ways. There is nothing to sign because there is nothing to buy — but equally there is no institutional agreement, no single sign-on, and no negotiated data-processing agreement on offer. If your institution requires those before students may use a system, this will not fit, and it is better to know that now than in week three.

Background reading you can assign

Free guides on this site, written for practitioners rather than for search engines. The first two are the ones the authentication memo draws on.

Terms of use

The classroom pack is © Lexeprint Inc. It is licensed for adaptation: you may reproduce, adapt, and distribute it for teaching, including in a graded course and in a course students pay for, provided the CustodyTrack.io credit and copyright notice on each document remain intact. If you adapt the scenario, the adaptation is yours. You may not sell the pack itself as your own product.

This is general information about evidence-handling practice, not legal advice, and it does not create an attorney–client relationship. Whether any record is admissible is determined by a court under the applicable rules of evidence. Consult qualified counsel about your own matter.

Provided "as is", without warranties of any kind. Lexeprint Inc. is not responsible for how a completed form is used, stored, or relied upon.

© 2026 Lexeprint Inc. All rights reserved.

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