Convicted offenders who are no longer in custody are still required to submit a DNA sample, according to a recent letter from the attorney general to the Department of Corrections.
Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen sent a letter Thursday to the DOC advising that a convicted offender's obligation to submit a DNA specimen does not expire when the offender leaves the criminal justice system.
""I have concluded that, once an offender becomes obligated to provide a biological specimen, that obligation remains until he or she discharges it through the submission of a biological specimen,"" Van Hollen said in the letter.
According to Bill Cosh, Van Hollen's spokesperson, the letter was sent at the request of the DOC.
""The Department of Corrections believes that the attorney general's opinion confirms the approach the department has already been taking and will continue to take in our ongoing effort to obtain biological specimens from individuals who are required by law to provide a sample, but have failed to do so,"" the DOC said in a statement.
Current law allows the DOC to criminally prosecute individuals who fail to submit DNAsamples. According to a statement from Van Hollen, failure to submit a sample results in a misdemeanor.
In his letter, Van Hollen recommended creating a ""noncriminal mechanism"" to avoid taking individuals to court in compliance-failure cases.
""While I believe that a court may correct its sentencing order to require submission of a specimen, this is a potentially time-consuming and resource-intensive process,"" he said.
Van Hollen's letter comes just over five months after the Wisconsin Department of Justice found that DNA samples from nearly 4,000 convicted felons were missing from the statewide database. Last September, Gov. Jim Doyle created a DNA task force to track down the missing DNA samples.
