FSS to tackle US DNA backlog

In the UK, testing takes place within days of samples being gathered while in other countries, prosecution cases are crumbling as police forces wait up to a year for results.

“The UK is at the forefront of DNA testing,” said an FSS spokesman.

“We were the first country to undertake this kind of project and are therefore at a much more advanced stage than in many other countries.

“We are now offering our services to other countries, such as the US, to help them deal with the backlogs they are facing.”

DNA experts in the USA, where there is a target turnaround time of 60 days, are currently facing a backlog of more than 12 months with around 1,700 cases currently outstanding and a further 1,500 cases being added to the workload each year.

In Canada, the backlog rose last year to 873 cases – with a further 760 yet to be accepted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police – making the average turnaround time 114 days – almost four times the official target of 30 days.

The UK has pioneered DNA testing procedures following the introduction of legislation making it a requirement on all forces to take DNA samples from any individual arrested for a recordable offence.

The introduction of such measures initially created its own headaches and following the implementation of the legislation, the UK faced its own lengthy backlog.

Government funding – and Whitehall pressure – forced labs to rethink their testing processes and revolutionised the British approach to the problem.

There is no longer any DNA testing backlog in the UK and the FSS’s 100-strong staff now processes all samples in three to seven days.

“We are more advanced in our techniques,” said the FSS, “including the use of automated systems in our profiling procedures.”

“We are now able to offer our help to other countries because of the lessons we have learnt in the past.”

Such is the FSS’s efficiency with DNA testing that it managed to save the Home Office grave humiliation by turning the embarrassing discovery of 26,000 mislaid samples into a triumph of technical expertise.

In less than ten months, and at a rate that must leave its transatlantic counterparts gasping in admiration, the FSS, in addition to its standard daily workload, has been able to upload into its database more than 20,000 of the samples, all of which date back to before 2005.

The Home Office claimed that the 20,049 uploaded profiles were part of 26,000 that had originally not been added to the UK DNA database because of discrepancies between the information entered onto the police national computer at the time the samples were taken and written information submitted with the samples by officers.

The outstanding 6,089 samples cannot now be added to the database for “either technical or legal reasons”.

The newly-incorporated samples have led to 355 new matches with crimes scenes and the arrest of 85 suspects for a total of 183 offences.