New Law Is Finding Matches In New, Old Criminal Investigations

ACROSS INDIANA – Indiana State Police says their laboratory finished putting together information for the Indiana Legislature about SB322, which became a new law on Jan. 1 after passing the 2017 legislative session. The law's recent change meant an expansion of samples that are entered into the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), where as before Jan. 1, 2018, only DNA samples of convicted felons were put into the CODIS, ISP says. Now anyone who gets arrested for an claimed felony offense has their DNA collected as part of the in-processing at a county jail, before the DNA samples are sent to the ISP Indianapolis Regional Laboratory for analysis and entry into the CODIS database, police officials say.

The ISP Labratotry Division has put together information from three months of data available since the Jan. 1 change. The lab's data includes both DNA samples from arrested and convicted people. This data on matches are also referred to as "hits," police officials say. ISP specifies all data below:

ISP January-March 2018 CODIS Data:

Total offender samples received: 12,705

• Convicted Offender Samples: 3,330

• Felony Arrest Samples: 9,375

Total CODIS Hits: 244

• 46 hits attributed to the 3,330 new convicted offender samples collected Jan. 1 to March 31, 2018
• 72 hits attributed to the 9,375 felony arrest samples collected Jan. 1 to March 31
• 126 hits attributed to recently completed unsolved crime scene samples
• Nine of the 126 hits are case to case matches, which ISP describes as separate criminal investigations that may involve the same reporting police agency or different agencies
• The other 117 of the 126 are new case profiles that match offenders previously entered in CODIS

While the Indiana State Police is not able to share direct case information for other police agencies, we are able to share some general information from the first three months of 2018 data collection for CODIS:

• The first arrestee hit was on January 14, 2018 and matched to an unsolved rape investigation that began in 2016

• All County jails facilities are providing arrestee samples
• 44 different counties have been involved in hits in the first quarter of 2018
• CODIS has generated hits between Indiana and 23 other states during the first quarter of 2018

According to ISP, Maj. Steve Holland, commander of the Indiana State Police Laboratory Division commented, “We are very pleased with the results seen thus far and are confident more and more crimes will be solved with the combination of convicted and arrested persons samples being matched in the CODIS program.” Holland continued, “None of this would have been possible without the enabling legislation, as well as the cooperation of all the county jail personnel who collect the DNA samples and the diligent efforts of state police laboratory scientists that are processing these samples for input into CODIS.”

ISP says that while it's not certain, it's anticipated this number will begin to decrease over future quarters as the number of cases of persons arrested prior to January 1, 2018 continue to process through the judicial system.

More details: www.in.gov/isp

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