WASHINGTON - Twelve years ago, Congress passed a bill aimed at bolstering the capacity of state and local crime labs. It was known as the DNA Backlog Elimination Act. The ensuing effort now bears the more modest title of DNA Backlog Reduction Program. But even with the new name, it is an ambitious venture. Since 2006, Congress has poured $785 million into helping to fix the logjam in DNA evidence collection at the state and local level through this and other programs.

Theres no question that a serious problem exists. Recent advances in science and technology have made DNA a more useful tool for convicting the guilty and exonerating the innocent, but major backlogs persist, despite broad acknowledgement that delays in processing DNA evidence are keeping criminals on the streets.

"A lot of it is supply and demand," says Kermit Channel, director of the Arkansas state crime lab. "Because the technology offers so much more today than even five or six years ago, law enforcement is asking for more and more from us."

Federal help is making a difference. Between 2004 and 2010, the Backlog Reduction Program, run by the National Institute of Justice, has funded completion of 172,761 cases and significantly increased state and local DNA laboratory capacity. Channel credits federal funding with dramatically reducing the Arkansas backlog - which peaked at 18,000 in 2005 - to 4,200 now.

"Without those funding sources, we wouldnt be anywhere near where we are today," Channel says. Federal grants have allowed the state to invest in more sophisticated equipment that sorts through evidence faster, as well as nine additional staff members to process the evidence.

Still, while the crime lab is now able to stay up to date with homicides and sexual assaults, property crimes remain a major driver of the states persistent backlog. Processing evidence of property crimes is critical, Channel says, not just for solving those offenses, but also for investigating others that may have been committed by the same person.

This is because in addition to analyzing DNA evidence recovered from crime scenes, crime labs are tasked with maintaining databases that hold DNA profiles of certain convicted offenders. State and local DNA databases and the national DNA database, connected through the FBI-run system CODIS, have become important tools for solving crimes in cases for which there are no suspects. As of January 2012, CODIS had led to 171,800 "hits" or matches and assisted in more than 165,100 investigations, according to the FBI.

As the utility of DNA databases in solving crimes has become apparent, state policies have expanded to require that more and more DNA be collected and processed for inclusion in those databases. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is pushing a bill that would require DNA from any person convicted of any crime to be included in a database, and about half of the states now include DNA from arrestees who have not been convicted of crimes.

While inclusion of additional offenders and arrestees has made CODIS a more useful tool, it has also clogged crime labs and raised major concerns about privacy for individuals who have not been convicted, says Sara Katsanis, a researcher at Duke Universitys Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy. "The presumption is that if we had the whole population in there then it would work best," she says.

When states expand requirements to include more offenders and arrestees, Katsanis adds, they often fail to consider the impact on their existing crime lab capacity. "Theres not a lobbyist for the rape victims who arent getting their samples processed," she says.

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Crime labs struggle with DNA test demands