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Wisconsin is Hunting for the DNA of Thousands of Past Offenders
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Monday, December 06, 2010

 
In Wisconsin, four detectives are spending a lot of time tracking down offenders who should have provided DNA samples for the state's DNA databank, but somehow never did.
Sifting through a dozen or so databases, including driver's license records, criminal history files and death indexes, the detectives have come up with about 3,500 addresses. As of Nov. 29, they've sent out 2,560 letters.
One of the detective, a retired Madison police officer, Steve Reinstra, said, "What we're doing right now is we're sending letters out to the folks that we can find a current address on and we're telling them to come in to their local jail to give up their DNA." Surprisingly, about 1,544 offenders have come in to provide DNA.  The rest will likely get a second letter, and if they don't respond they'll face prosecution under a new state law that makes failure to provide DNA a misdemeanor crime, punishable with fines and up to nine months in jail.
A series of audits starting in fall 2009, prompted by the missing DNA of an accused serial killer, revealed that 17,698 offenders owed their DNA. That's nearly 14 percent of the 130,386 total offender population required to provide DNA since 1993, the first year the state mandated DNA collection for sex crimes. In 2000 the law was expanded to include all felons. And in 2005, sex-offense misdemeanors were added.
Read the news article here.  





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