DOJ Interim Policy 2019
Definition
US Department of Justice Interim Policy on Forensic Genetic Genealogy DNA Analysis (24 September 2019), limiting IGG to violent crimes and unidentified remains, requiring opt-in databases and FBI approval for federal agencies.
- Issuing body
- US Department of Justice
- Date
- 24 September 2019
- Applies to
- Federal law enforcement agencies
- Crime scope
- Violent crimes and unidentified human remains
- Database rule
- Opt-in genealogy databases only
Common questions
Why does the policy restrict which crimes qualify for IGG?+
The restriction to violent crimes and unidentified remains cases reflects a proportionality judgment: using consumer genealogy data, which was shared for family-history purposes, is reserved for the most serious investigative needs where conventional CODIS searching has failed to identify a suspect or victim.
Does the 2019 policy bind state and local police as well?+
No. It applies to federal agencies and federally funded investigations. Individual states have since passed their own statutes or guidelines governing forensic genetic genealogy, and practice varies, so a state agency may operate under different rules unless it receives federal funding tied to the policy.
Related terms
- ForenSeq DNA Signature Prep Kit
- Verogen MPS library-preparation kit typing 27 autosomal STRs, 7 X-STRs, 23 Y-STRs, 94 identity SNPs, and 56 ancestry SNPs in a single...
- GEDmatch PRO
- The law-enforcement tier of GEDmatch, acquired by Verogen in 2020. Operates on an opt-in model; only profiles of users who have explicitly...
- Identical by Descent (IBD)
- A chromosomal segment shared between two individuals because both inherited it from a common ancestor without an intervening recombination event. The amount...
- Investigative Genetic Genealogy (IGG)
- A forensic identification technique that uploads a crime-scene DNA profile to a consumer genealogy database, identifies partial matches suggesting distant family relationships,...
- Massively Parallel Sequencing (MPS) / NGS
- High-throughput sequencing technology that generates millions of short reads simultaneously; used in forensics for sequence-level STR typing (Verogen MiSeq FGx, Ion S5)...
- Othram Inc.
- Texas-based forensic genetics company offering the FORCE target-capture SNP profiling service for degraded and low-quantity crime-scene DNA and unidentified-remains casework using IGG.
- Parabon NanoLabs
- A US company that became the primary commercial provider of forensic IGG casework following the Golden State Killer case, offering the Snapshot...
- Precision ID GlobalFiler NGS STR Panel
- Thermo Fisher Scientific MPS library-preparation kit for the Ion S5 platform typing the 20 CODIS core loci and additional markers with sequence-level...