In this past decade, there has been a major advancement in a powerful criminal justice tool, deoxyribonucleic acid, or more commonly known as, DNA. Without even realizing it, we could leave behind flakes of skin, drops of blood, pieces of hair, and even saliva, all of which can be used to identify us. Prosecutors and police departments have to depend on these small pieces of DNA to lock up criminals for the crimes they committed.
With great accuracy, DNA is able to identify criminals where there happens to be biological evidence present, and it can also be used to clear people mistakenly convicted or accused of crimes.
This new DNA technology is vital to making sure that the criminal justice system is accurate and fair, and to solve many cold cases from years back that remain unresolved. With this new technology many more crime cases have been solved because of the modern day forensic science technologies today.
There is one of two ways that DNA is generally used to solve crime or cold cases. If a suspect is identified in a case, a sample of their DNA will be taken that will be compared to the other evidence at the crime scene. These results will show if the suspect committed the crime because their DNA was found at the crime scene.
The other way DNA can be used is in cases where the suspect has not been identified, so biological evidence will be collected from the crime scene to be analyzed and then compared to other listed offenders in the DNA database.
The DNA database can link two different crime scenes together if they happen to be similar to each other.
For example, when police feel like two cases have similar evidence found, they can search the cases up in the DNA database to see if they are somehow connected to each other, or it could be the same suspect that committed both crimes.
With the new updated DNA database that police have, they are able to submit a DNA profile from crime scenes, offenders, missing persons, and unidentified human remains, to have a search result within a few minutes.
This tool has been a huge advancement in solving crimes because police can now quickly identify the suspect, and try to locate them. Now the police officers know who to look for, and where they live now, so finding them won’t take very long.
Due to this new advancement, cold cases can now be opened again to figure out who committed the crime and also so innocent people can stop being put into jail for a crime they never committed and have DNA as evidence.