NamUs Fiscal Year 2023 Annual Report

• NCJ Number: 309847
• Date Published: January 2025
• Length: 25 pages
• Agencies: NIJ
• Publication Type: Report (Annual/Periodic)

Abstract

NamUs is the nation’s only centralized federal program that provides forensic, investigative, and analytical services to resolve all long-term missing and unidentified decedent cases. NamUs provides a unified and secure database for missing, unidentified, and unclaimed persons records, allowing for searching, cross-matching, and sharing of case records. In Fiscal Year 2023 (FY23), the NamUs program created and implemented a tracking system that streamlined all forensic services and analytical requests in Fiscal Year 2022. Using this tool, the Total Requirement for Unified Sample Tracking (TRUST) System, the NamUs program was able to facilitate 3,264 forensic and analytical services requests, which included fingerprint, odontology, anthropology, DNA processing, and forensic genetic genealogy. The NamUs program established services with accredited forensic laboratories providing traditional DNA testing (including STR, Y-STR, and mitochondrial DNA analysis) and CODIS access in April of 2023. In the remaining six months of FY23, NamUs facilitated the processing of 440 traditional DNA samples which included family references, unidentified human remains, and direct reference samples. NamUs facilitated trainings for the criminal justice community at over 90 events, reaching over 17,000 attendees and logged over 1.6 million website views. More than11,900 new NamUs users were registered in the fiscal year, bringing the total number of public users to more than 33,930 and professional users to more than 17,820. A total of 12,604 new case entries were created in the database this fiscal year bringing the total number of cases in the database to 54,221. Over 5,300 cases were archived this fiscal year, bringing the total number of archived cases to 46,666. Since the successful transition of NamUs to a secure cloud environment, reported in the 2022 summary, the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) implemented a major update to the hosting infrastructure to remediate potential security vulnerabilities in the older operating system.