Reno had sought the legal and practical implications from the panel. The commission's proposed recommendation, according to USA Today, says mass testing should be postponed until the DNA samples already collected from more than 1.4 million convicted criminals can be added to a national database. The commission's executive director, Christopher H. Asplen, was quoted in Wednesday's editions of The Washington Post as saying those samples should be analyzed and catalogued before a decision is made on testing arrestees. Once we get a system that's up to speed, we can start doing these other things. DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is a genetic configuration unique to each person.
Investigators can take DNA samples from crime scenes found in blood, sweat, sperm or saliva.
Privacy advocates had argued that such mass testing would violate the rights of innocent people. Some law enforcement officials claim such testing would find the perpetrators of countless unsolved crimes. Some European countries have tested the entire populations near the scenes of violent crimes, with varying degrees of success.