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Analyzing Approaches to the Backlog of Untested Sexual Assault Kits in the U.S.A
- Source :
- Journal of Forensic Sciences. 63:1110-1121
- Publication Year :
- 2018
- Publisher :
- Wiley, 2018.
-
Abstract
- Motivated by the debate over how to deal with the huge backlog of untested sexual assault kits in the U.S.A., we construct and analyze a mathematical model that predicts the expected number of hits (i.e., a new DNA profile matches a DNA sample in the criminal database) as a function of both the proportion of the backlog that is tested and whether the victim-offender relationship is used to prioritize the kits that are tested. Refining the results in Ref. (Criminol Public Policy, 2016, 15, 555), we use data from Detroit, where government funding was used to process ≈15% of their backlog, to predict that prioritizing stranger kits over nonstranger kits leads to only a small improvement in performance (a 0.034 increase in the normalized area under the curve of the hits vs. proportion of backlog tested curve). Two rough but conservative cost-benefit analyses-one for testing the entire backlog and a marginal one for testing kits from nonstranger assaults-suggest that testing all sexual assault kits in the backlog is quite cost-effective: for example, spending ≈$1641 to test a kit averts sexual assaults costing ≈$133,484 on average.
- Subjects :
- Injury control
Computer science
Cost-Benefit Analysis
Poison control
Sample (statistics)
Resource Allocation
Specimen Handling
Pathology and Forensic Medicine
03 medical and health sciences
Forensic dna
0302 clinical medicine
Criminal Law
Genetics
Humans
030216 legal & forensic medicine
Activity-based costing
Crime Victims
0505 law
Sexual assault
Government
Actuarial science
Sex Offenses
05 social sciences
DNA
Models, Theoretical
DNA Fingerprinting
Police
United States
Test (assessment)
050501 criminology
Databases, Nucleic Acid
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 00221198
- Volume :
- 63
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Journal of Forensic Sciences
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....4bd7af9370a041080c9b82b0004ac5ea