Coverdell FY 2024 Grant Funding for North Dakota Attorney General Crime Laboratory Division

The North Dakota Office of Attorney General Crime Laboratory Division (NDOAG-CLD) is faced with the ongoing need for continuing education, required certification, and on-going training needs. In addition, the laboratory faces delays in turnaround times due to manual processes and increased caseload.

Years of severe budget cuts and loss of staff require the laboratory to rely heavily on the Paul Coverdell Forensic Science Improvement Grant Program formula dollars. Fiscal Year 2024 funds will be utilized to continue to provide required training and continuing education for laboratory personnel. The laboratory has recently hired ten new forensic scientists and is in the process of hiring 5 additional. This increase in staff of newly hired analysts will require extensive training to become competent in their areas of expertise which will be assisted by sending the forensic staff to training and forensic related conferences. This will ensure that the CLD forensic science staff is trained to meet current industry standards in each discipline.

Additionally, funds will be used to purchase much needed supplies and consumables to assist the laboratory in meeting the associated objectives of reducing the backlog of forensic evidence, including controlled substances, toxicology, and fire debris cases. Rising costs and supply chain shortages have caused the costs of supplies and consumables to rise dramatically. Coverdell funds will provide much needed assistance in covering these costs.

The CLD will also use funding from the FY24 Paul Coverdell Forensic Science Improvement Grants Program to provide for an assessment as well as the application and maintenance fees charged by its accrediting body by the ANSI-ASQ National Accreditation Board (ANAB). The CLD’s Reaccreditation Assessment is scheduled for June 2025.

Funds will also be used to purchase a LIMS dashboard software that will assist in increasing efficiency, decreasing backlogs, creating statistical reports, charts, and providing insight into lab workload and efficiency in each unit. Funding will also be used to purchase additional service hours from the laboratory’s LIMS provider to create upgrades for worksheets and reports for all disciplines and enhancement requests for features or reporting capabilities.

The NDOAG Crime Laboratory Division is striving to attain an average 60-day turnaround time from submission to final report in all disciplines and to increase the knowledge and competency of each analyst at the laboratory.