SAN FRANCISCO — Genetics testing companies are offering to help reunite families separated at the border, but it’s unclear how they would get DNA kits into the hands of migrants and the testing itself could carry hefty privacy risks for migrant families.
Comments Off on Using DNA tests to reunite migrant families on the border raises privacy concerns
Posted in Ancestry, Funding, Immigration
NIJ has updated several solicitations (listed below) with instructions for submitting environmental documentation, commonly known as the “NEPA checklist,” with your grant application, if the checklist is required.
NIJ is making this checklist and associated instructions available to you in an effort to streamline the application process and to avoid post-award withholding conditions, related to NEPA, where possible.
Please carefully review the instructions and submit the completed and signed checklist, if appropriate, with your grant application.
Comments Off on Update to Several Open NIJ Solicitations – NIJ Funding Update
Posted in Funding
The EI&CE program awards funding to eligible entities, through a competitive application process with three program objectives:
Enhancing the capacity and increasing the efficiency of crime laboratories to process, record, screen, and analyze DNA and other forensic evidence
Decreasing the turnaround time to process and analyze DNA evidence.
Ensuring continued support for enhancing the quality of DNA analysis results.
All applications are due by 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on May 7, 2018.
Comments Off on New Solicitation: Forensic DNA Laboratory Efficiency Improvement and Capacity Enhancement Program
Posted in Funding
NIJ is seeking applications for the FY 2018 DNA Capacity Enhancement and Backlog Reduction (CEBR) program.
This program furthers the Department’s mission by funding States and units of local government with existing crime laboratories that conduct DNA analysis to process, record, screen, and analyze forensic DNA and/or DNA database samples, and to increase the capacity of public forensic DNA and DNA database laboratories to process more DNA samples, thereby helping to reduce the number of forensic DNA and DNA database samples awaiting analysis.
All applications are due by 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on May 7, 2018.
Comments Off on New Solicitation: DNA Capacity Enhancement and Backlog Reduction Program (Formula)
Posted in Funding
U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) and Representative Ted Poe (TX-02) today introduced the Debbie Smith Crime Victims Protection Act, legislation to reauthorize the Debbie Smith Act and dedicate much-needed resources to state and local law enforcement agencies to conduct forensic analyses of crime scenes, including untested rape kits. Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Dean Heller (R-NV), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) cosponsored the bill.
NIJ seeks proposals for funding to assist in defraying the costs associated with postconviction DNA testing in cases of violent felony offenses (as defined by State law) in which actual innocence might be demonstrated. Funds may be used to identify and review such postconviction cases and to locate and analyze associated biological evidence.
All applications are due by 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on April 26, 2018.
Review the Solicitation.
Comments Off on New Solicitation: Postconviction Testing of DNA Evidence
Posted in Database, Forensic Industry News, Funding
The Paul Coverdell Forensic Science Improvement Grants Program awards grants to States and units of local government to help improve the quality and timeliness of forensic science and medical examiner/coroner’s office services. Funds under this program may be used to eliminate a backlog in the analysis of forensic evidence and to train and employ forensic laboratory personnel and mediocolegal death investigators, as needed, to eliminate such a backlog.
NIJ seeks proposals for formula (“base”) funding as well as proposals for competitive funding under the program.
Under the program, State Administering Agencies (SAAs) may apply for both formula and competitive funds. Any State/local government entity performing forensic science services is considered a “forensic science laboratory.”
ll applications are due by 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on April 30, 2018.
Applicants must register with Grants.gov prior to submitting an application.
Comments Off on New Solicitations: Paul Coverdell Forensic Science Improvement Grants Program
Posted in Funding
SAN JOSE (CBS SF) — The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors Tuesday unanimously passed a recommendation from Supervisor Cindy Chavez requiring the District Attorney’s Office to bring back current information on financing needed for the county’s untested sexual assault kits.
Comments Off on Santa Clara County Supes Pass Sexual Assault Kit Analysis Recommendation
Posted in Funding
WASHINGTON – The Department of Justice today announced awards totaling nearly $37 million to help state, local and tribal government agencies improve the response to sexual assault and victim services, and analyze unsubmitted sexual assault kits in law enforcement custody. The grants will aid jurisdictions in reducing backlogs of sexual assault evidence and solving crimes of sexual violence.
Administered through the National Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, managed by the Office of Justice Programs’ Bureau of Justice Assistance, 21 grant awards totaling more than $35 million were awarded to improve the processing of sexual assault kits and strengthen jurisdictions’ capacity to act on evidence resulting from kit processing. Those awards are available online at: https://www.bja.gov/funding/FY-2017-National-Sexual-Assault-Kit-Initiative-Funding-Awards.pdf
For years, thousands of rape kits sat in storage at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation untouched and untested as the agency’s crime lab found itself short-staffed and unable to keep pace.
But an influx of more than $850,000 in new funding from the state to add more scientists and lab technicians has officials hopeful the agency will eventually eliminate the rape kit backlog.
The sheriff’s department also will add four new deputy positions to patrol the county’s unincorporated areas, four crime lab analysts to test DNA in criminal cases, and six forensic scientists to address a backlog in testing sexual assault evidence. Those additional scientists will help process rape kits in under a month – which in line with national recommendations – instead of the 30 to 45 days the process now takes in the county.
Comments Off on Orange County supervisors pass $6.2 billion budget, which increases deputies’ pay, hires more forensic scientists
Posted in Backlogs, Forensic Industry News, Funding
The Idaho Innocence Project will benefit from a $630,000 U.S. Department of Justice grant to test DNA in possible wrongful-conviction cases.
But none of the money can be used on Idaho cases, and the grant had to be given to Boise State University.
Comments Off on Boise State grant for post-conviction DNA testing comes with a catch
Posted in Funding
It was one of those ugly, unsolved crimes that seem to haunt many neighborhoods in New York City: In February 1993, a man with a knife abducted an 11-year-old girl in an apartment building hallway in the Hamilton Heights section of Manhattan, forced her to the roof and sexually assaulted her.
The girl was taken to Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, where nurses gathered physical evidence from her body, but no one was ever arrested. The DNA of her attacker was not even tested until 2002, when the city undertook a project to clear a backlog of rape-evidence kits.
Comments Off on 24 Years Later, DNA Leads to Arrest in Manhattan Attack on a Girl
Posted in Backlogs, Cold Cases, Funding
Investigators all over Wisconsin will now have to find a new lab, and the other options will cost them money, and cost them time trying to solve certain cases. “If it’s the FBI and it’s not a pressing matter might take years to complete,” Simley said.
Comments Off on Funding cut for Wisconsin missing persons and cold cases
Posted in Forensic Industry News, Funding
Scientist pick up unidentified human remains to analyze in the Missing Persons Lab at the UNT Health Science Center in Fort Worth, Texas on July 15, 2014
Comments Off on Program to identify dead and missing across US put on hold
Posted in Forensic Industry News, Funding
Try in our lab
Confidence Comes From Clear Vision
RSS Feed