Tag Archives: Pennsylvania Senate Bill 775

Update on Pennsylvania Senate Bill 775

By a vote of 42-6, the Pennsylvania Senate passed a bill (discussed here on March 18, 2011) to begin taking DNA samples on arrest and to authorize kinship trawling in some cases. The proposed changes come with a price tag. Although the state police laboratory is reducing the backlog of convicted-offender samples, it hardly has surplus capacity. The appropriations committee’s fiscal note estimates the cost for laboratory staff and supplies for phasing in just a portion of the samples that could be collected from arrested at more than $560,000 in 2012-13.