NCJ Number
140879
Journal
Journal of the Forensic Science Society Volume: 32 Issue: 4 Dated: (October-December 1992) Pages: 301-306
Date Published
1992
Length
6 pages
Annotation
A small experiment used databases of British Caucasians and Afro-Caribbeans to establish the feasibility of exploiting ethnic variations in crime stains to provide intelligence information for police investigations into unsolved crimes.
Abstract
The findings helped to establish the scope and limitations of the use of DNA profiling to supplement the use of conventional forms of sample typing. The results were presented in logarithmic form, showing the likelihood ratio for 257 Caucasians and 111 Afro-Caribbeans. Given the current reference databases, the authors conclude that the method's effectiveness is limited. They note the difficulty in achieving reliable information at the case submission stage and the problem of recording entries from mixed-race individuals. This method would probably be used only in a major investigation where any information could assist in strategic decisions. The authors predict that this technique would be only of limited use in discriminating Indo-Pakistani Asians from the two groups studied in the present experiment. 1 table, 2 figures, and 5 references