NCJ Number
224691
Date Published
October 2005
Length
30 pages
Annotation
This report examines the achievements and accomplishments of the United Kingdom's DNA Expansion Program, from its inception in 2000 to 2005.
Abstract
Program highlights are presented in the areas of outcomes, achievement process, and scale of the investment and include: (1) the annual number of direct DNA detections more than doubled from 8,612 in 1999/2000 to 19,873 in 2004/2005; (2) on average the database provides the police with around 3,000 matches each month; (3) serious offenders are often detected and caught because they are picked up and their DNA sampled by the police at a later date; (4) between April 2000 and March 2005 over 2,250,000 persons were sampled and their DNA profiles were loaded on the database; (5) there has been a significant increase in potential DNA material retrieved at crime scenes and in crime scene profiles loaded onto the database; (6) the estimated annual number of DNA suspect-to-crime scene matches increased by 75 percent from 23,021 to 40,169 between 2000 and 2005; and (7) the United Kingdom Government and police have invested over 300 million in the DNA Expansion Program over 5 years. The United Kingdom's DNA Expansion Program began in April 2000 with the aim of providing specific funding to police forces in England and Wales to enable the taking of a DNA sample from all known offenders, thereby accelerating the buildup of offender profiles on the National DNA database. It also provided funding to enable the collection of more DNA material left by offenders at crime scenes. The Program's main target at the outset was to hold a DNA profile for all active offenders on the National DNA database by March 2004. The target was achieved by April 2004 with 2.5 million profiles. Today's objective is to ensure that the database is kept up to date and that newcomers to crime have their DNA added to the database quickly. Tables and figures