Value of DNA Evidence in Detecting Crime

Abstract

DNA material is now collected routinely from crime scenes for a wide range of offences and the timely processing of the DNA is seen as key to its success in investigating and detecting crime. An analysis of DNA material recovered from the volume crime offences of residential burglary, commercial burglary, and theft of motor vehicle in Northamptonshire, U.K., in 2004 has enabled the DNA to be categorized into seven sources. Further analysis using a logistical regression has revealed a number of predictors, other than timeliness, that greatly influence whether the DNA material recovered from a crime scene enables the crime to be detected. The results indicate that a number of these predictors are of statistical significance and may be just as relevant in determining whether DNA successfully detects the crime as the timeliness of the processing of the DNA material. The most significant predictor was found to be investigating officer accreditation with location, quantity, and type of DNA material at the crime scene also being relevant. Accreditation of the Crime Scene Examiner recovering the DNA material was found not to be significant. Consideration is given to where further emphasis is needed by the U.K. police service to maximize the opportunities to detect volume crime with DNA.

The Prum Regime: Situated Dis/Empowerment in Transnational DNA Profile Exchange

“…Similar findings were obtained from experimental programmes in other countries (Ashikhmin n.d.;Bond 2007;Roman et al 2008;Fraser and Williams 2009). Solving crimes can be considered a 'good' to the extent that it satisfies crime victims.…”

Donor-derived DNA in hair follicles of recipients after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation

“…[1][2][3][4][5] Blood, buccal swabs with epithelial cells, as well as hair follicles, are among the most commonly investigated materials in forensic genetics. 6,7 It is a well documented fact that blood that comes from a person who has had a succesful allogeneic hematopoietic SCT (HSCT) is not suitable for personal identification and kinship analysis because of its conversion to a complete donor type. 8,9 As revealed by Hong et al, 10 in buccal swabs taken from the majority of the patients examined, there exists donor chimerism ranging from 10 to 96%.…”

Lifestyle chemistries from phones for individual profiling

“…However, both analyses have limitations. DNA analysis is limited because in many cases samples have degraded, contain insufficient amounts of DNA, are samples from which DNA cannot be obtained easily, or are contaminated (3), leading to difficulties in recovering the genomic profile of the suspect (7). Fingerprints collected at a crime scene have proven to be a very powerful approach but have limitations because they can be insufficient for matching to a specific individual if it is only a partial print (8) or overlap with other interfering fingerprints (9), and many materials, such as many fabric types and rough surfaces, are unsuitable for fingerprint analysis.…”