Since 2011, the UNT Center for Human Identification (UNTCHI) has managed the National Missing and Unidentified Person System (NamUs) through a cooperative agreement and a series of funding grants. On Dec. 4, 2020, it looked like that partnership was going to come to an end, with UNTCHI releasing a statement saying an agreement could not be met and they would no longer manage NamUS beginning Jan. 1, 2021.
After some panic and confusion, UNTCHI removed the statement and accepted $4.3 million in funding just five days later on December 9 to continue to manage the missing persons program. Two days after that, on Dec. 11, 2020, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) put out a request for proposals to manage NamUs. The deadline to submit recently expired and today, NIJ said they expect to award a new contract by April 2021.
“Generally, federal grants are meant as short-term exercises in capacity building and not to underwrite long-term projects, certainly not on the scale of NamUs,” explained Lucas Zarwell, director of the Office of Investigative and Forensic Sciences at NIJ. “Because the NIJ intends NamUs to last, later this year we will begin administering the program through a multi-year contract. A contract will allow us to continue the program indefinitely and give NamUs direct federal oversight, ensuring its transparency to the American taxpayer.”
The new service agreement/contract is effective for 5 years, with a transition period built in as a deliverable to ensure no disruption of service. That same transition period will occur if UNTCHI hands over NamUs to another entity come April. Currently, DNA typing and forensic anthropology are suspended at UNTCHI, but the NIJ told Forensic there is a grant coming to revive those soon. Those two services will then continue during the new contract, in addition to fingerprint examinaton, forensic odontology and databasing.
If UNTCHI submitted a proposal, it’s possible the center could continue to manage NamUs as it has for the past decade. For the first time in a while though, there are alternatives—NIJ could award the contract to another entity who completes all casework in-house, or the entity may work on some casework but sub-contract with others for the remainder. In this case, UNTCHI could become a subcontractor, working with whoever manages NamUs. At this point, however, it’s too early to tell if UNTCHI will have a role in NamUs, and if they do, what exactly it will entail.
An expanding program
In their now-revoked statement, UNTCHI said “funding limitations and significant program modifications directed by the NIJ” were to blame for the sides’ initial inability to reach a cooperative agreement. However, the center did ultimately accept the $4.3 million award that was included in the DOJ’s FY 2021 budget.
The $4.3 million was an increase of more than $2 million from the year prior. Typically, the DOJ grant hovers in the $2.0 to $2.5 million range. Over the years, however, NIJ has provided millions in funding each year from other sources, including the “DNA and Other Forensic Activities” appropriation and the “Violence Against Women” program. That was the case in 2020 as well, with NIJ awarding UNTCHI almost $8 million to continue NamUs database and testing services and “to eliminate a backlog of forensic casework accrued by the center,” Zarwell said.
The funding provided from “other” grants has been necessary to meet the rising demand of the last several years. In the last decade, missing persons casework submitted to NamUs has increased more than 350 percent—rising from about 10,000 cases in 2011 to more than 46,000 in June 2020. Additionally, the number of unidentified persons cases has more than doubled during roughly the same time period, from fewer than 9,000 to over 18,000 cases in 2020.
“Thousands of medical examiners, coroners, investigators and members of the public have turned to NamUs services in recent years, and their numbers continue to grow as more states require investigating agencies to submit cases to the program,” Zarwell said.
And NamUs has come through. As of January 2021, the program has played a vital role in solving more than 2,700 missing persons cases and identifying over 2,000 individuals from their remains. While accomplished, that’s only a small percentage of cases.
Data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics indicate that an estimated 4,400 unidentified human bodies are received in medical examiners' and coroners' offices in an average year. Of those, about 1,000 remain unidentified after one year. At the end of 2019, more than 87,000 active missing persons cases were on file in the FBI’s National Crime Information Center, and more than 8,100 sets of human remains had been submitted for analysis. To make matters worse, based on surveys of coroners and medical examiners, the latter number likely represents only a small percentage of the total unidentified decedents recovered in the United States.
“Fourteen years ago, NIJ recognized this accumulation of unsolved cases as a national ‘silent mass disaster’ and began laying the groundwork for [what would become NamUs],” said Zarwell. “We will make the investments necessary to ensure the continuity of this vital public safety program while allowing it to evolve in tandem with the challenges facing investigators and forensic professionals. Our partners in law enforcement demand it, and the families of the missing deserve no less.”
*The Office of Investigative and Forensic Sciences in the National Institute of Justice contributed quotes, data and information to this article.