Tuesday, August 10, 2010

411 - FBI Lab's Forensic Testing Backlog Traced To Controversial DNA Database

The pressure to feed results into a controversial, expansive DNA database has bogged down the FBI's DNA lab so badly that there is now a two-year-and-growing backlog for forensic DNA testing needed to solve violent crimes and missing persons cases.

Civil libertarians call the database -- which increasingly includes everyone convicted of every federal law, legally innocent people awaiting trial and non-citizens detained in the U.S. for any reason -- unnecessary and unconstitutional.

And yet a review by the Department of Justice's Inspector General released on Monday concludes that the need to analyze and upload some 96,973 or more DNA samples a year into that database is contributing to a backlog of forensic DNA cases that stood at 3,211 in March.

That translates into a delay of about 150 days to over 600 days for law enforcement agencies who need answers right away.

"Backlogs may delay legal proceedings that are waiting on the results of DNA analysis. Backlogs can also prevent the timely capture of criminals, prolong the incarceration of innocent people who could be exonerated by DNA evidence, and adversely affect families of missing persons waiting for positive identification of remains," the reports states.

The report finds that the backlog of forensic cases has increased by almost 40 percent in one DNA unit and by almost 130 percent in another, just since October 2008.

Part of that increase is a direct result of the FBI shifting resources from forensics to feeding the database, which now holds approximately 8.5 million profiles.