Award Information
Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2024, $1,500,000)
The Louisiana State Police Crime Lab (LSPCL) seeks funding from the Bureau of Justice Assistance National Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI), under Purpose Area 3, to collect DNA samples from qualifying arrestees and convicted offenders from whom a sample has not been previously collected. The DNA samples will also be entered into the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) as Louisiana State Police is charged with the task of CODIS operations in the state of Louisiana.
The LSPCL in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is responsible for receiving, verifying acceptability, and analyzing lawfully owed arrestee and convicted offender DNA collections, as well as developing and uploading DNA profiles into the CODIS database. LSPCL also retains the collected DNA samples for match verification and other quality assurance purposes. The State of Louisiana began collecting and enrolling lawfully owed convicted offender samples into CODIS in 2002 and has been a trailblazer regarding lawfully owed arrestee collections, becoming the first state in the country to collect and enroll lawfully owed arrestee samples into CODIS (2003), and analyze lawfully -owed arrestee samples as a part of the booking process using Rapid DNA technology (2022).
The LSP seeks Sexual Assault Kit Initiative funds to research, review, and collect lawfully-owed DNA from arrestees and convicted offenders for enrollment in CODIS in hopes that they will return hits to generate new investigative information in unsolved cases.