Which practice ensures evidentiary integrity by documenting everyone who handles the item?

• A. Documentation control
• B. Secure storage
• C. Incident log
• D. Chain of custody

Answer: (D)

The essential idea is keeping an unbroken, documented trail of who handles a given item from the moment it’s collected to its final disposition. This chain-of-custody record shows every transfer, possession change, and location, along with dates, times, and the people involved, so there’s a verifiable path that the item has followed. In practice, you seal the item in tamper-evident packaging, assign a unique identifier, and use a chain-of-custody form or ledger where each handler signs off with a timestamp and notes any changes in storage or purpose (e.g., testing, transport, analysis). Any break in this documented sequence calls the integrity of the item into question, so rapid documentation of every handoff and condition is crucial.

This approach is what ensures that the evidence remains authentic and uncontaminated, and that test results or observations can be trusted as referring to the same item. It differs from general documentation control, which focuses on the management of documents themselves; secure storage, while protecting the item, doesn’t by itself establish the handoff history; and an incident log records events around an incident but not the specific custody path of the item.