the crime report

Private forensic laboratories argue that they could help cut the backlog of DNA evidence awaiting analysis in many states if an FBI requirement were eliminated or eased. Hundreds of thousands of “rape kits” remain untested because state and local crime laboratories are unable to handle the load, representatives of New Jersey-based Orchid Cellmark Inc. told leaders of criminal-justice organizations yesterday in Washington, D.C. The private lab says a major problem is an FBI rule that any evidence test contracted out by a public lab to a private one must undergo a “100% technical review,” which typically takes more than four hours per case. (more…)

Senior Vice President

WestCare

(702) 385-2090

Nevada

leslie.balonick@westcare.com

President

JFA Institute

Nevada

Asstin@aol.com

More than 100,000 people disappear every year in the U.S.  But there are few national tools to help anxious relatives locate their loved ones.

Casey King, 30, was juggling a newborn baby and two older children when her husband Jody went missing last April.  She had no doubt something was wrong. Jody, 28, adored his children—and it was hard to believe he would disappear voluntarily a few weeks after the birth of their third daughter.

But convincing law enforcement, public officials, and others  was a different matter.

(more…)

A Baltimore inmate who bluffed his way out of prison probably wouldn’t have tricked guards if they had eye-scanners like those being installed at many jails, the Associated Press reports. The federal government is paying for the scanners to help build a nearly foolproof identification system to stop to such escapes. Raymond Taylor was serving three life sentences for shooting his ex-girlfriend and her two teenage daughters. He impersonated a cellmate last week and was released. He was arrested the next day in West Virginia. (more…)

Director of Couples and Family Therapy

San Francisco Department of Veterans Affairs

Clinical Professor of Psychiatry

University of California, San Francisco

keith.armstrong@va.gov

Tulsa VA Behavioral Medicine Clinic

10159 East 11th Street

Tulsa, OK 74128-3058

918-610-2000

When DNA is used in cold cases, and the samples often are incomplete or degraded and there are few other clues to go on, the reliability of DNA evidence plummets—a fact that jurors weighing such cases are almost never told, the Washington Monthly reports. As a result, DNA, a tool renowned for exonerating the innocent, may actually be putting a growing number of them behind bars. Says Dan Krane, a molecular biologist at Wright State University and a critic of the government’s stance on DNA evidence: ”There is a public perception that DNA profiles are black and white. The reality is that easily in half of all cases—namely, those where the samples are mixed or degraded—there is the potential for subjectivity.” (more…)

Solitary Confinement Cells Have Become America’s New Asylums

“If you want to know where they are all being kept,” said Todd Winstrom, “they’re down in the hole.”

Winstrom, a staff attorney for Disability Rights Wisconsin, was talking about what happens to mentally ill offenders when they enter his state’s prison system. Without treatment options—and without anyplace else to put them—these prisoners quickly end up in solitary confinement, where they may remain for months or years.

(more…)