We have all seen the headlines: Thousands of rape kits in law enforcement agencies are untested; crime laboratories that have substantial backlogs of DNA cases waiting to be analyzed.

Delays in submitting evidence to a forensic laboratory as well as delays in analyzing the evidence result in delays in justice. In worst-case situations, delays can result in additional victimization by serial offenders or in the incarceration of individuals who have not committed the crime they are accused of or charged with.

Policymakers ask why DNA backlogs persist even after the federal government has provided hundreds of millions of dollars to eliminate the backlog. This is a fair question; to answer it requires understanding both what a backlog is and how backlogs can be reduced. This report addresses that question and the answers to it.

What is—and is not—a backlogged case?
There is no industry-wide definition of a backlog. Some laboratories consider a case backlogged if the DNA has not been analyzed in 90 days. Others consider a case backlogged when the DNA has not been analyzed and the final report has not been sent to the agency that originally submitted the DNA. NIJ defines a backlogged case as one that has not been tested 30 days after it was submitted to the laboratory.

Crime laboratories have two kinds of DNA backlogs, and each has its own particular issues:

1. Casework backlogs. This type of backlog consists of forensic evidence collected from crime scenes, victims, and suspects in criminal cases and submitted to a laboratory. Processing this type of evidence is time-consuming because the evidence must be screened to determine if, and what kind of, biological materials are present before DNA testing can even begin. Some of these samples can be degraded or fragmented and can contain DNA from multiple suspects and victims.
2. Convicted offender and arrestee sample backlogs. By 2009, the federal government and all 50 states had passed bills requiring collection of DNA from offenders convicted of certain crimes. In addition, the federal government and many states had also passed legislation to allow collection from people who are arrested for certain crimes.
    

The processing of convicted offender and arrestee samples involves the DNA testing of the samples and the subsequent review and upload of the resulting DNA profiles into the national DNA database, CODIS (Combined DNA Indexing System), which is operated by the FBI.

Delays in processing convicted offender and arrestee samples may occur at several stages along the way: the analysis, the review or the uploading into CODIS.

Because DNA samples taken from convicted offenders and arrestees are always collected on a standard, consistent medium (usually a paper product), they are significantly easier and faster to analyze than casework samples. The standardized collection methods used in each state for convicted offender and arrestee samples makes it possible to use automated analysis on robotic platforms that can process approximately 96 samples and controls simultaneously. In addition, the laboratory does not need to “find” the DNA, unlike the forensic casework samples.