The following
reports have just been released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics:
These reports
describe the annual activity, workloads and outcomes of the federal criminal
justice system from arrest to imprisonment, using data from the U.S. Marshals
Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Executive Office for U.S.
Attorneys, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts and the Federal Bureau
of Prisons. Data include arrests by law enforcement agency, offense and federal
judicial district; sentence length by type of offense and the proportion of
offenders returning to federal prison within three years of release.
Visit https://www.nij.gov/topics/forensics/evidence/controlled-substances/Pages/improving-reliability-of-drug-tests-by-officers.aspx
to read a brief article about a more reliable test system for police officers
to detect and identify illegal drugs. In this report from the National
Institute of Justice, researchers looked at transition metal cluster compounds
for the fluorescent identification and trace detection of substances of abuse.
The resulting test system allows investigators in the field to photograph the
fluorescence spectrum with a smartphone and identify the substance through
comparison to an online database.
Applying Internal
Validation Guidelines for Expanded STR Loci Kits, a new FTCoE "In
Brief," can be downloaded from the Center's website at https://rti.connectsolutions.com/strkitguidelines/.
This In Brief provides application of already existing guidance documents.
Organizations like the Scientific Working Group on DNA Analysis Methods and the
Organization of Scientific Area Committees provide the forensic community with
best practices and are continuously improving standards and recommendations as
technology improves and changes. The recommended validation studies are
foundational for laboratories to determine the effectiveness and reliability of
any new system to develop standard operating procedures
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