An internal Justice Department review said the FBI has “effectively eliminated” its backlog of DNA samples collected from federal arrestees, convicted offenders, and non-U.S. citizens detained in the country, reports Legal Times. The FBI reviews DNA samples to aid law enforcement investigators working on unsolved cases. Last December, the FBI reported a backlog of 312,000 samples that had not been processed.
Justice’s Inspector General’s office said that by this May, the backlog had fallen to about 14,000 samples. The FBI has the ability to analyze 60,000 samples a month. The report said the FBI reduced the number of untested samples through a strategy that included additional hiring and a reconfiguring of laboratory space for more efficient processing.