Award Information
Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2016, $465,957)
The Nebraska State Patrol Crime Lab (NSPCL) is a division of the Nebraska State Patrol (NSP). The NSPCL is responsible for analyzing evidential material associated with criminal investigations for all state and local law enforcement agencies in the state of Nebraska. The NSPCL is accredited by the ASCLD-LAB-International Accreditation to ISO 17025. In addition, the NSPCL is mandated by State law to be responsible for DNA analysis on DNA samples collected from all convicted felony and certain qualifying misdemeanor offenders. The NSPCL is responsible for storing and maintaining the resultant profiles in the Nebraska Data Bank.
The Federal funding from this award will be used for the following goals: (1)Reduce the backlog of forensic biology/DNA cases through the continued funding of an analyst; (2) Maintain the current turnaround time and backlog free status of DNA database samples through the continued funding of the laboratory technician; (3) Provide continuing education to DNA Forensic Scientists as required by the accrediting bodies; (4) To implement probabilistic genotyping software for the analysis of complex mixtures; (5) Maintain the Integrity of evidence submitted to the NSPCL by replacing aging refrigerators and freezers; and, (6) Comply with both accreditation and federal standards by completing an external DNA QAS assessment.
Because of the $465,957 made available through this project, the NSPCL expects to analyze 144 cases and reduce the turnaround time of forensic cases to less than 3 months and maintain the no backlog status in the Database Section. This will be done while increasing the ability of the NSPCL to deal with samples routinely seen in casework today.
nca/ncf