Sabine De Moor

Managing forensic DNA records in a divided world: the Belgian case

Purpose – This paper aims to describe the activity of managing records related to forensic DNA identification. First, it illustrates the fundamentals behind the technique of forensic DNA identification. Second, it explains the legal and institutional contexts in which it is used as well as the notion of DNA-based judicial records. Third, it provides details of records management issues that are met in practice. Design/methodology/approach – An interdisciplinary team reflects upon the practices surrounding the management of DNA-based records in the Belgian National DNA database during more than 10 years. Findings – The main problems with managing DNA-based judicial records stem from the existence of natural boundaries between the various stakeholders operating with or within the Belgian judicial system. Six types of issues have been found: non-automaticity and omission, error-prone and inefficient manual operations, electronic issues, results quality, useful reporting and incoherence and duplication. These...

DNA Databases as Alternative Data Sources for Criminological Research

DNA traces found at crime scenes and DNA records held in databases have already helped the police to solve numerous investigations into specific crimes. The police clearly benefit from the use of forensic science at an operational (i.e. case) level. This paper focuses on the use of forensic DNA at a strategic level: its use in the study of patterns of criminal behaviour. The usual sources of information for this type of research are recorded crime data, self-report studies and victimization surveys. However, as our review will show, these data sources cannot provide a complete picture of crime. We therefore propose an alternative approach to criminological research that takes into account DNA databases and has the potential to augment current methods and extend the existing knowledge beyond known offenders. The use of DNA databases has an important advantage for criminological research: it is possible to link offences committed by the same individual, whether the offender’s identity is known or not. By making a one-on-one comparison of police data with the corresponding DNA data, not only can co-offenders be studied, but a larger network of offenders connected to each other can also be analysed, even if their identity is unknown to the police.

Integrating police-recorded crime data and DNA data to study serial co-offending behaviour

When studying offending behaviour, researchers primarily rely on police-recorded crime data, even though such data contain only detected crimes and known offenders. Using DNA data, which also contain information on unknown offenders, enables researchers to link offenders by identifying their presence at shared crime scenes. In this paper we combine police-recorded crime data with DNA data to study serial co-offending behaviour. We focus on the changes the networks of crimes obtained from police-recorded crime data undergo when integrated with data from unknown offenders in the DNA database. We demonstrate that an integrated dataset reveals more and larger networks of crimes with a larger spatiotemporal spread compared with the police-recorded crime data only.When studying offending behaviour, researchers primarily rely on police-recorded crime data, even though such data contain only detected crimes and known offenders. Using DNA data, which also conta...