Partial Matches Allowed in New York
Fresh off the heels of California’s implementation of an arrestee inclusion rule for its DNA databases, New York’s Commission on Forensic Science has recently approved the use of partial matches in state criminal investigations. Often, DNA evidence left at a crime scene does not exactly match any profile in a forensic database. However, a partial match might yield information about a relative who shares genetic traits with an unknown suspect.
As described in the CGS report Playing the Gene Card?, this technique may help identify some suspects, but can also have significant civil liberties implications such as turning relatives into genetic informants without their knowledge or consent. Moreover, the relatives of those in forensic databases may be effectively subjected to a lifetime of genetic surveillance, whereby each DNA fragment shared with a banked relative’s profile will be checked against all other crime scene samples in perpetuity. And since inequalities in the criminal justice system have led DNA databases to be disproportionately filled with profiles from Blacks and Latinos, the people most likely to be affected are those from these communities. It is well worth keeping an eye on New York to see the effects of this new policy.