First 100 Hits: Forensic-Offender Matches on the New York State DNA Data Bank

• NCJ Number: 194247
• Author(s): James A. Gilmer; David J. van Alstyne
• Date Published: January 2002
• Length: 8 pages
• Corporate Author: New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services
• Sale Source: New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services
• Publication Format: Document
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: New York State Office of Justice Systems Analysis "Research Note," January 2002.

Annotation

This report examines the first 100 hits on the New York State DNA Data Bank, which was established in 1994 and expanded in 1999.

Abstract

The New York State DNA Data Bank is part of CODIS, the national Combined DNA Index System developed by the FBI. A "hit" denotes a match between a DNA profile taken from a forensic evidentiary sample, submitted by law enforcement as part of a criminal investigation, and an offender's DNA profile stored on the Convicted Offender Index of the State DNA Data Bank. Initial sections of this report describe the demographics of offenders matched with forensic DNA profiles and also note the prevalence of offenders identified in hits who were "grandfathered" into the Data Bank as a result of the 1999 change in the law that required the indexing of offenders then serving a sentence for a qualifying conviction offense. Later sections of the report summarize the extent of offenders' prior involvement in the criminal justice system, their criminal justice status at the time of the hit, and the distribution of offenses associated with the hits. Where it was possible to track cases after the hit, the criminal justice processing outcomes are also reported. The final section of the report discusses the implications of these findings and offers recommendations for improving hit tracking, the expansion of the DNA Data Bank, and the utility of DNA Data Bank information in researching substantive areas of criminal justice policy. The report recommends the development of additional data linkages in order to perform a detailed, substantive assessment on case processing that involves DNA evidence. It also recommends supplementing the analysis of hits with a study of crime patterns of offenders not currently indexed to assess the benefits of expanding the DNA Data Bank. Other recommendations are to conduct research on the effect of forensic DNA identification on the processing of sexual assault cases, as well as to evaluate the effectiveness of forensic DNA identification in the investigation and criminal prosecution of burglary and related offenses. 5 figures and 9 notes