AG Ferguson announces DNA collection from more than 2,600 serious offenders
Friday, April 12, 2024
As a result of Ferguson’s lawfully owed DNA project, these samples are now in a national DNA database critical to identifying perpetrators of unsolved rapes, murders and other violent crimes.
Washington requires many offenders convicted of sex offenses and serious violent crimes to provide their DNA as a term of their conviction. Ferguson’s office is working with local law enforcement across the state to collect these DNA samples from sex offenders, violent offenders and individuals convicted of serious felonies.
The samples are added to the national Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), which investigators and prosecutors use to solve serious crimes and bring justice to victims.
When DNA is collected at a crime scene, it is tested by the state’s Crime Lab and checked against the national database. When it returns a “hit,” or a match to evidence already in CODIS, this can help identify serial rapists, link cases across the country, shed new light on cold cases and provide answers to crime victims and their families.
DNA evidence can also exonerate individuals who were wrongfully convicted.
In short, collecting lawfully owed DNA from qualifying offenders helps solve more crimes — here in Washington and across the country.
Since the project launched more than four years ago, law enforcement has collected 2,681 DNA samples from violent and sex offenders and entered them into CODIS. This has resulted in 97 “hits.”
Ferguson launched the lawfully owed DNA project in October 2019, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Justice and local law enforcement.
More information here
When DNA is collected at a crime scene, it is tested by the state’s Crime Lab and checked against the national database. When it returns a “hit,” or a match to evidence already in CODIS, this can help identify serial rapists, link cases across the country, shed new light on cold cases and provide answers to crime victims and their families.
DNA evidence can also exonerate individuals who were wrongfully convicted.
In short, collecting lawfully owed DNA from qualifying offenders helps solve more crimes — here in Washington and across the country.
The Attorney General’s Office estimates thousands of violent offenders are living in Washington with an obligation to provide their DNA. This estimate is based on initial data from the Department of Corrections, followed by an extensive verification process designed to identify and locate offenders who still owe a sample. Ferguson’s lawfully owed DNA project aims to stop these offenders from slipping through the system.
Since the project launched more than four years ago, law enforcement has collected 2,681 DNA samples from violent and sex offenders and entered them into CODIS. This has resulted in 97 “hits.”
Ferguson launched the lawfully owed DNA project in October 2019, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Justice and local law enforcement.
More information here
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2 comments:
Once again, THANK YOU BOB FERGUSON!!! How criminals got away without giving DNA could happen so much is unbelievable! Thank you for getting everyone in CODIS!!!
PS Australia (I think) gets DNA from every baby at birth - no more Jane Doe murder victims! We should all be in a register - just in case (earthquakes, other disasters).
We live in the United States with a functioning 4th Amendment. There's no information more private than our genetic information, and it is the antithesis of freedom to involuntarily collect that information from the most innocent among us.
Criminals can be compelled under warrant. Babies? No way.
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