Alaska Requires DNA Be Collected From People Arrested for Violent Crimes. Many Police Have Ignored That.

Route Fifty: Law enforcement agencies across Alaska, including in the state capital, are failing to collect DNA from people arrested for violent crimes, violating a state law passed with great fanfare in 2007 that was going to put Alaska at the leading edge of solving rape cases.

The Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica found that across the state, some law enforcement agencies are not aware of the law or are not following it. That lapse means the database is potentially missing thousands of people and may explain why the effort to test a backlog of unexamined rape kits for DNA has yielded only one new prosecution.

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