The Census of Publicly Funded Forensic Crime Laboratories (CPFFCL) included all state, county, municipal, and federal crime labs that (1) are solely funded by government or whose parent organization is a government agency and (2) employ at least one full-time natural scientist who examines physical evidence in criminal matters and provides reports and opinion testimony with respect to such physical evidence in courts of law. Some publicly funded crime labs are part of a multi-lab system. The census attempted to collect information from each lab in the system. Police identification units, although sometimes responsible for fingerprint analysis, and privately operated facilities were not included in the census.

The first CPFFCL was conducted in 2003 to capture data on the 2002 workload and operations of the 351 publicly funded crime labs operating that year. A follow-up census was fielded three years later to address additional forensic science issues and examine changes since 2002. In 2010, BJS conducted a third census on the workload and operations of publicly funded crime labs in 2009. A total of 397 (or 97%) of the 411 eligible labs responded to the 2009 census, including at least one from every state.