Law enforcement & public crime labs
Custody that holds from the scene to the evidence room — and across every agency in between.
Booking, release, lab submission, and return, each recorded as a chained entry that both the releasing and the receiving party sign. Years later the property unit can produce the whole history of an item without reconstructing it from signature cards.
Sworn officers, property and evidence units, task forces, and public forensic laboratories.
The problem
Where the custody record comes apart.
The log lives in one building
A property and evidence log is only as good as the building it sits in. When an item goes to a regional laboratory or a task-force partner, the receiving agency opens its own log, and the two are reconciled by hand — if they are reconciled at all.
Handoffs break at the organisational boundary
Disputed custody records usually come apart where one agency ends and another begins: a submission to a state lab, a return to the submitting agency, a release to a prosecutor's office. Each side documents its half and nobody holds the whole chain.
Audits and reviews arrive without notice
Inventory audits, internal-affairs reviews, and laboratory quality checks all ask one question — who held this item, when, and can you show it. Answering from paper costs hours per item, and the items being asked about are rarely the easy ones.
Digital submissions do not fit a physical form
A phone extraction, a body-worn video export, and a cloud return are all evidence, but a form built around a sealed bag has nowhere to record an acquisition hash, an extraction method, or an unlock state.
Where it fits
Three points in work you already do.
Intake
Book an item against its case number using the fields a property unit already collects — item identifier, condition on receipt, seal and packaging, storage location.
Handoff
Release to a laboratory examiner, a partner agency, or an outside expert. The receiving party confirms identity and signs, so neither side can complete a transfer alone.
Return & audit
Every entry is chained to the one before it, so an item's full custody history re-computes on demand — for an inventory audit, a discovery request, or testimony.
The terms this record uses
- Property & evidence unit
- Booking and release
- Inter-agency handoff
- Submitting agency
- Seal and packaging
- Inventory audit
- SWGDE
- ISO/IEC 27037
What you can stand behind
Claims that survive being tested.
Guidance your SOP already cites
Form structure and terminology are informed by the digital-evidence guidance agencies already work from — NIST SP 800-86, ISO/IEC 27037, and SWGDE practice documents — so the record reads the way your written procedure does.
Something a quality file can point at
Laboratories working under ISO/IEC 17025 have to show that handling is documented and traceable. A chained custody entry that both parties signed is a concrete artefact for that file. The laboratory's own quality assessment remains entirely its own.
Verification without disclosure
A defence expert, an oversight body, or a partner agency can confirm a record is unaltered from a verification code alone. Item descriptions, case numbers, and personnel names are never exposed by verifying — the service holds hash values, not contents.
No hardware, no evidence in our hands
Nothing about the evidence itself is uploaded. CustodyTrack holds hash values and minimal metadata, which leaves the agency's retention, disclosure, and storage posture exactly where it already is.
Start from the right form
The templates this work needs.
Physical intake first — the sealed-bag fields a property unit already uses — with device templates for extractions and images, and a blank template for whatever your procedure adds on top.
General
Physical / generic
A tangible item you can bag and label — quantity, condition, seal. No acquisition hash.
Devices
Mobile device
The whole handset or tablet, not one app — IMEI, unlock state, and extraction depth.
Devices
Computer
A desktop or laptop imaged for analysis — storage, write-blocker, and image hash.
General
Blank / custom
Start from scratch: you choose physical or digital, and add your own fields.
All twelve templates are available on every plan — see the full set.
Common questions
- Can this run alongside our existing property and evidence system?
- Yes. CustodyTrack does not replace a records-management system or a property module. It produces a tamper-evident, independently verifiable record of each transfer that is filed alongside whatever system of record the agency already runs.
- Does a partner agency need an account to receive a transfer?
- No. The receiving party gets a secure link, confirms their identity, and signs to accept. Both halves of the handoff end up inside one chained record instead of in two separate logs.
- Is evidence data stored on CustodyTrack?
- No. The service stores hash values and minimal metadata — enough to show a record has not changed, and not enough to reconstruct the evidence or the case file.
What it costs
$4.99 per Authenticated Chain of Custody Form, or a monthly plan for regular volume. Transfers and verifications are unlimited and free on every plan, and the party receiving a transfer never pays anything.
Other work looks different? See the other three.
Put the next handoff on the record.
Two Authenticated Chain of Custody Forms free at signup — no card, and no procurement cycle to get started.