U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

Utilizing Overtime to Decrease the Latent Fingerprint Backlog

Award Information

Award #
2016-CD-BX-0048
Location
Congressional District
Status
Closed
Funding First Awarded
2016
Total funding (to date)
$105,212

Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2016, $105,212)

The Oregon State Police, Forensic Services Division (FSD) provides scientific, technical and investigative support to the criminal justice system through the forensic analysis of evidence and provides the only full service forensic laboratory system in the state. The FSD is comprised of five forensic laboratories that are geographically located throughout the state with 136 authorized positions allocated across the laboratories that provide forensic services.

The goal of the Forensic Services Division is to provide timely and accurate latent print fingerprint processing and comparison of evidence to aid in the identification of suspects or to exclude persons during criminal investigations. The objective of this proposal is to use overtime to enable the Division to work additional cases that will reduce backlogs and provide more timely results. The overtime will be distributed across all the labs to maximize the analytical resources that are available. Analysts are currently completing an average of .12 cases per hour. The Division's anticipated outcome is to use approximately 1,278 hours of overtime to complete an additional 153 latent print cases that will reduce backlog and improve turn-around-time.

The data related to the overtime will be collected through the JusticeTrax (JTrax) laboratory information management system. JusticeTrax is used to track the average number of forensic samples analyzed per month, the average number of days between submission and delivery of test results, and the number of backlogged submissions. The laboratory directors will submit monthly reports summarizing the amount of overtime used by each analyst and the number of cases completed which will be used to report results in the progress reports. nca/ncf

Date Created: September 26, 2016