It has been called the ""CSI Effect""—the tendency for law enforcement to rely too heavily on DNA evidence to back up their case. Unfortunately, DNA evidence is not always the magic bullet. Nevertheless, the CSI Effect has created a backlog of evidence, and the pile does not look like it will stop growing. In fact, the state Department of Justice says the backlog is now up to more than 1,700 cases.
New Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen has now told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that eliminating the backlog of DNA evidence at the state Crime Laboratory would take existing analysts up to 20 months—even if no new evidence was submitted. Now he's asking for more analysts at an additional cost of $2.5 million and hired former Dane County Sheriff Gary Hamblin as the head of the Division of Law Enforcement Services.
Van Hollen's campaign strongly criticized former Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager for failing to adequately address the situation. He even went so far as to peg the death of an officer to negligent backlog management. Now that Van Hollen is on the inside and looking up at the sky-high stack of work to be done, he has backed off his brash campaign talk.
We are disappointed Van Hollen made such big promises when he obviously did not know the extent of the problem and made campaign promises he could not deliver.
Lautenschlager never claimed the backlog was an easy problem to solve, and Van Hollen was wrong to take an oversimplified position solely to score cheap political points.
We hope Hamblin, who is experienced with the issue, will begin to organize the lab's new technology, thereby reducing the need for more analysts. We believe a more efficient crime lab is the only answer to this problem.
If the DNA backlog is to be reduced and even eliminated, law enforcement officials need to be better educated and be able to use more discretion regarding what gets tested. A tiered, priority approach might enable some of the more promising pieces of evidence to be placed ahead of the more questionable cases.
Furthermore, officers need to be educated to cut demand down to only those cases where conclusive evidence can be produced.
At least Van Hollen had the courage to admit an unpopular reality and is taking proactive steps to curb the problem, but since he focused so heavily on this issue during his campaign, we must hold him to the same high standards he held his predecessors.
