Dna Evidence In Property Crimes: An Analysis Of More than 4200 Samples Processed By The Brazilian Federal Police Forensic Genetics Laboratory

Abstract

DNA evidence is nowadays used for the investigation of a wide range of crimes. Once reserved mostly for violent cases such as rape and murder, biological material recovery is not only restricted to such crime scenes anymore. As DNA technology is getting cheaper and its results faster, there has been a growing interest in using DNA to help solving volume crimes, mostly property crimes. In this work, an analysis of more than 4200 samples of biological material recovered from more than 1000 cases of property crime offenses processed by the Brazilian Federal Police Forensic Genetics laboratory is described. Most of the property crime offenses included: (1) Automated Teller Machine (ATM) thefts, skimming or Personal Identification Number (PIN) capturing scams, (2) post office burglaries or armed robberies, (3) Federal government buildings burglaries. Success rate at DNA recovering and STR typing showed great variability, mostly due the nature of biological source, but an average of 52% of samples presented usable DNA and in 44% of the cases at least one genetic profile reached the minimal criteria for insertion in CODIS. Results obtained in this work showed what types of evidence are usually collected in property crimes and which ones provide the best results for DNA typing. These results can be used to better guide crime scene evidence collection practices in property offenses, making it more efficient and cost effective.