NCJ Number
200578
Journal
Canadian Society of Forensic Science Volume: 36 Issue: 1 Dated: March 2003 Pages: 19-28
Date Published
March 2003
Length
10 pages
Annotation
This study examined the impact of Canada's National DNA Data Bank on casework at the local level in the Province of Saskatchewan.
Abstract
DNA typing profiles in the Local Investigative Data Banks that meet national standards are uploaded to the National DNA Data Bank, which allows them to be compared to profiles uploaded from other forensic laboratories across Canada. In addition to Investigative Data Banks, the National DNA Data Bank also contains the Convicted Offender Index, which consists of DNA typing profiles of individuals convicted of designated offenses anywhere in Canada. An offender "hit" is a match between a profile in the Convicted Offender Index and a crime-scene profile from an unsolved case uploaded from a local forensic laboratory. As of December 2002, the Regina Royal Canadian Mounted Police lab (Saskatchewan) had accumulated 550 profiles in its Local Investigative Data Bank. The lab has generated 11 pairwise and 2 triple forensic hits within the laboratory, 8 inter-laboratory forensic hits, and 23 offender hits. In order to determine the impact of the National Data Bank hits at the Regina RCMP laboratory, investigators were surveyed for their comments. The comments were positive. The probative value of evidence that Data Bank hits have provided in linking crime scenes, excluding or including suspects, and developing suspects where there were none was a recurring theme among investigator comments. This article presents brief descriptions of 12 cases involved in selected local Data Bank matches, along with related investigator comments when available. 1 table, 2 figures, and 4 references