I’m watching Dateline and this suspect left a police interview and committed another murder. The first cops couldn’t arrest him because their evidence was all circumstantial. While they are looking for him now, the voiceover says DNA results are still not back. At this point it’s been several weeks. So Eli5 – DNA results: wtf takes so long?
Is there only one machine in the world? Can’t they move murder cases to the front of the line? Does the DNA fairy only come once a month? Does DNA take 500 hours to marinate? Can the cops buy another DNA machine? Do we need a GoFundMe?
In: 6
I’m UK based, but I’ve read that the forensic services in the UK and the USA are often underfunded, can’t hire/retain enough staff and have huge backlogs of work.
I’ve also read news reports of situations in the USA where crime scene specimens weren’t collected or stored properly so the material gets contaminated or degrades to being useless.
I’m not sure why that is the case in the USA, but in the UK it has been attributed to cost cutting measures under the guise of “streamlining the service” resulting in lower salaries (compared to other similar qualified work) and centralisation of forensic services leading to massive backlogs of work.
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