If you spend time around investigators, a pattern quickly stands out. They rarely complain about the dangerous parts of the job or the unpredictable hours. What wears people down are the long stretches of digital review that no one outside the work ever sees. Hours spent inside outdated audio players and document viewers, watching transcripts, chat logs, and exported data load at a snail’s pace. Nights spent combing through tens of thousands of pages that still leave unanswered questions.

Manual evidence review used to be manageable. Today it is one of the most time-consuming and mentally draining parts of investigative work, and many agencies are just coming to recognize how deeply it affects both investigators and case timelines.

Evidence Piles Up Faster Than Agencies Can Review It

Across agencies, investigators describe review sessions that look less like structured analysis and more like digital triage. A detective may start the evening with dozens of audio clips, a multi-thousand page PDF, a device extraction filled with years of messages, and a folder of images that may or may not be relevant. All of it opens slowly. None of it is connected. Each piece requires separate tools and separate attention.

This is not an edge case. It is increasingly normal in many jurisdictions. To understand the scope of the shift, consider the pace of evidence growth:

We know this problem is universal. A study from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) found that the digital evidence required per case increased by 80% in one year alone, demonstrating just how fast this volume is expanding.

The evidence changed faster than the workflow, and investigators were left to absorb the impact without additional time, tools, or staffing.

Manual Review Slows Investigations Before Anyone Notices

Cases rarely break all at once. They slow down in small, subtle ways and begin to drift.

A detective sees  the files that load fastest instead of the ones that matter most. A prosecutor receives an update that is technically correct but incomplete.

These small delays stack quickly and compound across the life of a case. When review cannot keep up with the pace of incoming evidence, early decisions are made on partial information. By the time critical details surface, the best window to use them may have already passed.

Evidence Overload Drives Burnout and Attrition

Detectives expect long hours and difficult subjects. What they do not expect is how isolating digital review can become. Listening to disturbing audio alone at the end of a shift. Sorting through graphic or emotionally heavy screenshots. Switching between tools that do not talk to each other. Trying to keep track of timelines while moving across formats that were never meant to align.

Much of this happens after hours because investigators need to spend the day contacting suspects and supporting victims. But the mental load accumulates. The fear of missing something important is always there. It is a quiet pressure that rarely appears in official documentation but has real effects on morale. This intense cognitive burden directly impacts staffing and agency health:

The impact of this burnout is clear. A 2023 survey from the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) highlighted that the high mental and administrative workload is a driving factor in the retention crisis, with 47% of agencies reporting that the number of resignations increased in the previous year.

This is why many leaders recognize that the solution lies in smarter tools, not just harder work:

As the former President of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), Chief Steven R. Casstevens, noted, "It's imperative that we equip our officers with technology that not only enhances safety but also reduces the administrative and cognitive burden, allowing them to focus on community engagement and complex investigations".

The math bears this out as well. We recently saw a homicide case with 850+ hours of jail calls and 50,000+ pages of PDF documents to review. Even if a detective worked 2x as hard, there’s no way to get through that while other cases keep coming in. We need to give investigators access to products that enable them to move 100x as fast. 

Manual Review Wastes High-Value Investigative Time

The cost of manual review is not just the number of hours spent. It is the value of the hours being spent.

Though salaries vary widely by region, the average detective costs an agency roughly one hundred and sixty-seven thousand dollars annually when salary, benefits, equipment, and training are included. Prosecutors and public defenders cost even more. These are some of the most precious hours in the justice system.

When those expensive hours are consumed by tedious sorting, the case itself suffers:

This loss of focus has measurable consequences. "Every minute an investigator spends on menial, manual sorting is a minute they aren't spending building the case narrative or interviewing a key witness," stated a technology lead quoted in Police Chief Magazine, "and that directly impacts the likelihood of solving the case".

When investigators spend days watching, listening, and sorting through material that does not require detective-level judgment, the agency loses time it can never recover. Cases move slower. Staffing pressure increases. And the people doing the work feel the strain most directly.

Agencies Are Shifting Workflows to Keep Up with Evidence Scale

The agencies keeping pace with Big Evidence are not doing it through longer hours or larger teams. They are adjusting their workflow.

They start review earlier. They begin with relevance, not file order. They bring formats together sooner, so audio, images, documents, and video strengthen each other. They expect every insight to tie back to its source immediately.

These adjustments give detectives time back. Interviews improve. Case updates become clearer. Follow-up work happens faster. The job regains its rhythm.

Investigators did not choose for review to take over their work. It simply grew to fill the space as evidence multiplied. Agencies that recognize this and shift their workflow are already seeing cases move faster and teams experience less strain. The ones that wait will feel the pressure grow each year. The volume is not going to shrink, but the approach to handling it can evolve. And when it does, investigators get to return to the parts of the job that truly require their judgment, experience, and presence in the community. 

In the next article, we’ll look at a question every agency is now facing: if traditional workflows are falling behind, can new tools like AI help investigators keep up — and what would it take for them to trust those tools?

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Guest contributor Antoine Sawadogo studies criminology and human rights at the University of Lille, with experience supporting judges, court systems, prosecutors, and defense attorneys.