~ the problem with public crime labs ~

A Bureau of Justice Statistics study on publicly funded crime labs reveals the extent of the work overload facing these institutions which are increasingly charged with the time and money consuming work of analyzing DNA samples. Read the study.

A typical laboratory in 2002 started the year with a backlog of about 390 requests, received 4,900 requests, and completed 4,600 requests.
Forty-one percent of publicly funded labs in 2002 reported outsourcing one or more types of forensic services to private labs.