Wisconsin’s crime lab is taking a lot longer to turn around slightly more cases.
Attorney General Josh Kaul on Wednesday released the annual report for the Wisconsin Department of Justice Division of Forensic Sciences crime laboratories.
“The work of our state crime labs is essential to protecting public safety and ensuring that criminal investigations and prosecutions lead to justice,” Kaul said in a statement. “The upcoming state budget must make the investment needed to adequately staff the labs.”
Kaul, however, brushed past the problems that the new report detailed.
While the total caseload at the crime lab jumped less than 1%, from 9,297 cases in 2021 to 9,388 cases in 2023, the turnaround time on the cases jumped significantly.
The annual report doesn’t list overall turnaround time numbers like it does overall cases.
But of the 11 different categories of work the report tracks, six of them saw increases in the Mean Turnaround Time.
The Crime Lab Report shows DNA work did the best. The Crime Lab took-in 4,439 cases last year, and had a Mean Turnaround Time of 108 days. That’s better than the 2021 numbers that show the lab took-in 3,612 cases, and had a Mean Turnaround of 128 days.
But most other categories saw far worse results.
The Trace Evidence Unit saw seven fewer cases last year than it did in 2021, but it took them 117 days more to turn those cases around.
The Toxicology Unit took-in more than 1,000 fewer cases, but saw its Mean Turnaround Time jump by 16 days. The Controlled Substances Unit saw 131 more cases between 2021 and 2023, but their Mean Turnaround Time nearly doubled from 61 days to 110 days.
Kaul is not offering any explanation as to why turnaround times jumped so much. He only, once again, asked to hire more people.
But many of the problems detailed in Kaul’s report were also included an audit from the Legislative Audit Bureau from back in June.
“From FY 2019-20 through FY 2022-23, the median turnaround time to complete assignments created in a given fiscal year increased by 48.7 percent. We calculated an overall median turnaround time for all units, in part, because DOJ indicated its goal is to have an overall median turnaround time of 60 days,” the audit stated. “2023 Wisconsin Act 58, which takes effect in July 2024, requires sexual assault kits to be processed within six months, or within 60 days if a victim reports a sexual assault to a law enforcement agency, the perpetrator’s identity is unknown, and a public safety threat exists. We recommend DOJ ensure the kits are processed within the deadlines required by [state law].”
Kaul, in his report, dismissed the audit’s recommendations.
“A Legislative Audit Bureau report regarding the timeliness of WSCL analyses did not include any recommendations that would meaningfully reduce turnaround times, providing further evidence of the need for the state legislature to invest in and authorize more staff for the crime labs,” Kaul said in his statement.
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