Combined DNA Index System
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The Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) is the FBI's national databases of genetic identification codes. Each DNA sample is stored as a 13 digit number.
Database infrastructure
CODIS consists of two sub-databases. The forensic index contains DNA evidence found at crime scenes. The offender index contains the DNA profiles of known offenders of sex offenses and other violent crimes. CODIS is primarily a national database for DNA data accumulated at local and state levels. All 50 states participate. In order to decrease the number of irrelevant matches, the convicted offender database requires all 13 CODIS STRs to be present for a profile upload. Forensic unknown profiles only require 10 of the STRs to be present for an upload.
The CODIS server itself is hidden at an unknown location.
Relative size
As of November 2005, 124,200 forensic profiles and 2.8 million offender profiles have been accumulated, making it the second largest DNA databank in the world behind the United Kingdom's National DNA Database. As of the same date, CODIS has produced over 27,700 matches to requests, assisting in more than 29,600 investigations.The growing public approval of DNA databases has seen the creation and expansion of many states' own DNA databanks. California currently maintains the third largest DNA databank in the world (naturally, as CODIS contains all states' databank information). Political measures such as California Proposition 69 (2004), which increased the scope of the databank, have already met with a significant increase in numbers of investigations aided.
Privacy concerns
The CODIS database originally was only used to collect DNA of convicted sex offenders. Over time, this has expanded. Currently all fifty states have mandatory DNA collection from sex offenders and nearly 40 states from all convicted felons. Other states have gone further in collection DNA samples from juveniles and all suspects arrested. In California, as a result of Proposition 69 in 2004, within five years all suspects arrested for a crime as well as some individuals convicted of misdemeanors will mandatorially have their DNA collected.
Currently, the ACLU is concerned with the increased use of collecting DNA from arrested suspects rather than DNA testing for convicted felons. Along with the ACLU, civil libertarians oppose the use of a DNA database for privacy concerns as well as possible institutionalized discrimination policies in collection.
See also
External links
- [CODIS homepage]
- "[ACLU Warns of Privacy Abuses in Government Plan to Expand DNA Databases]". ACLU. March 1, 1999.
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