Chuck Grassley: “I rise today to hail the impending passage of H.R. 4640--the DNA Backlog Elimination Act. This is a House companion bill…”

“I rise today to hail the impending passage of H.R. 4640--the DNA Backlog Elimination Act. This is a House companion bill to S. 903--the Violent Offender DNA Identification Act of 1999--which I introduced with my colleague from Wisconsin, Senator Kohl. While existing anticrime technology can allow us to solve many violent crimes that occur in our communities, in order for this technology to work, it must be used. I have been a longtime advocate for use of the Combined DNA Indexing System (CODIS), which serves as a national DNA data base to profile convicted offender DNA. In fact, during consideration of the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996, I proposed a provision under which Federal convicted offenders' DNA would be included in CODIS. Unfortunately, the Department of Justice never implemented this law, though currently all 50 States collect DNA from convicted offenders. One of the purposes of this legislation is to expressly require the collection of DNA samples from federally convicted felons and military personnel convicted of similar offenses. Collection of convicted offender DNA is crucial to solving many of the crimes occurring in our communities.”