FY 2017 DNA Capacity Enhancement and Backlog Reduction Program

Johnson County is the most populous county in the state of Kansas with an estimated 2015 population 580,159. The JCSOCL provides services at no cost to all local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies within the county.

The Biology section consists of ten Forensic Scientists (FS). Currently one FS is a grant funded position. All FS assigned to the Biology section are capable of performing biology/DNA analyses. Requests for biology/DNA analysis has increased over 35% in the course three years and has exceeded the laboratory’s output capacity for timely analyses.

The goal of the JCSOCL is to provide high quality DNA analyses with a reduced turnaround time (≤180 days). In order to obtain this goal, two objectives have been identified. Objective one is to retain one full-time grant funded position to work biology/DNA cases. Objective two is to purchase, validate, and implement DNA mixture software.

Continual improvements have been made to the efficiency of the Biology section including evidence acceptance policies, new technologies, and additional personnel. It is critical that we at least maintain the level of staffing in the Biology section. This funding will be used to retain the current grant funded position. The amount of funding available to the JCSOCL will be enough to pay the salary and benefits for a 64 week period. It will be a goal for the grant funded position (after completion of training) to work approximately 348 DNA items from July 1, 2018 to July 12, 2019.

An additional JCSOCL improvement is the imminent implementation of the semi-continuous probabilistic genotyping (PG) software Lab Retriever. While Lab Retriever makes more use complicated DNA data than traditional CPI, this system is fairly labor intensive; therefore, a more automated system is favorable. This funding will be used to purchase the continuous PG software STRmix. STRmix is more automated than Lab Retriever and also makes better use of the data by utilizing peak heights in data analysis. The amount of funding available to the JCSOCL will be enough to pay for four user licenses, maintenance and upgrades, technical support, and training for eight staff. The goal is to purchase, train, validate, and implement STRmix by May 1, 2019.

nca/ncf