Cranfield University is investing £3.5 million in the latest forensic science technology at its Cranfield campus. Building on Cranfield’s distinctive strength in defense and security, this forensic science teaching and research facility will be unparalleled in the UK. Students and staff will have access to new facilities such as a virtual reality autopsy table, crime scene investigation rooms and a simulated mass grave excavation site, from summer 2020.
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Former San Diego County Sheriff’s Captain Marco Garmo was arrested last week based on a federal grand jury indictment that charges him with operating an illegal firearms trafficking business – sometimes from his office at the Rancho San Diego Station with the help of others, including a fellow Sheriff’s deputy.
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The Houston Forensic Science Center (HFSC) and Northeastern Illinois Regional Crime Laboratory (NIRCL) are the latest U.S. forensic labs to announce plans to use STRmix to resolve DNA profiles in criminal investigations.
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Racial disparities at every level of the criminal justice system in America are well documented. Now, a new study by reveals it also exists at the initial level of arrest, even when the crime is committed by a diverse pair of co-offenders. The study, examines crimes committed together by a black person and a white person and finds that the black offender is slightly more likely than their white partner to be arrested for the same violent offense.
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Studies find the U.S.-funded war on drugs has pushed traffickers into remote forest areas, where the shadowy underground economy they have built is devasting the environment, directly causing more than $214.6 million in natural and cultural resource loss in the region's protected forests each year.
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Last week, Attorney General William Barr announced the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons (MMIP) Initiative, a national strategy to help address the disproportionally high levels of violence that American Indian and Alaska Native people suffer. The Department of Justice is investing an initial $1.5 million to hire 11 MMIP coordinators to serve with U.S. Attorney’s offices in 11 states, as well as others that request assistance.
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DNA Labs International is serious about helping law enforcement solve their most violent crimes through the use of forensic genealogy in combination with DNA analysis.
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A new genetic study carried out at the University of Helsinki and the University of Turku demonstrates that, at the end of the Iron Age, Finland was inhabited by separate and differing populations, all of them influencing the gene pool of modern Finns.
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A handful of Democratic New York State Senators have introduced a bill to end New York City’s DNA database, calling it “rogue” and “unlawful”. Sponsored by Brad Hoylman (D, WF), the bill seeks to end the city’s DNA database, as well as prohibit any other municipality from maintaining such a database. The major sticking point between the state senators and the NYPD is the collection of DNA from arrestees and suspects not yet convinced or never convicted of a crime.
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Fentanyl overdoses cluster geographically more than non-fentanyl overdoses, according to a study just released by Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. The findings suggest that fentanyl-involved overdoses are concentrated in resource deprived neighborhoods over and above what data show for opioid and polydrug overdoses.
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