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                            Funding & Awards
 Assessing the Feasibility, Accuracy, and Technical Capabilities of a National Ballistics Database
Award Information
Awardee
              National Academy of Sciences
Award #
              2003-IJ-CX-1013
Funding Category
              Formula
Location
                    Washington, DC
Status
              Closed
Funding First Awarded
              2003
Total funding (to date)
              $1,347,347
Original Solicitation
              National Forensic Sciences Improvement Act
Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2003, $1,347,347)
Project Summary for 2003-IJ-CX-1013
The National Research Council proposes to draw upon expertise from relevant disciplines in the scientific and practitioner communities to provide assistance to the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) in assessing the technical feasibility, accuracy, and effectiveness of a national ballistics database for use as an aid to crime investigations. The project will support the activities of a new committee on ballistics assessment under the aigis of the Division on the Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education and the Division of Engineering and Physical Sciences. The study will focus on fundamental issues concerning the uniqueness of ballistic images; the ability of imaging systems to capture unique characteristics and to extract reproducible information from ballistic impressions; the probability that ballistics evidence presented would lead to a match with an image captured in a database; the development of base rates for crimes that produce ballistic evidence, the probabilities and consequences of false positives and negatives, and the operational effectiveness and utility of such a database in solving crimes.
The project is expected to inform federal policy on three separate options for creating a ballistics database: a) maintain the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network (NIBIN) on ballistics recovered from crime scenes; b) enhance the NIBIN system, for example to improve its ability to match crime scene evidence with the gun used; c) establish a national ballistics database of images from bullets fired from all, or nearly all, newly manufactured or imported guns for the purpose of matching ballistics evidence from a crime scene to a gun and, through information on its points of manufacture and sale, tracing the gun to its original owner.
nca/ncf



  
Grant-Funded Publications
        
                      Credibility and Use of Scientific and Technical Information in Science Policy Making: An Analysis of the Information Bases of the National Research Council’s committee reports
                  Ballistic Imaging

  
Date Created: June 18, 2003
    
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