Social, Political, and Economic Impact
Crime scene analysis is one of the most socially beneficial categories in biotechnology. Using DNA sampling and DNA fingerprinting, it helps to solve crimes ranging from counties, to state, to countries. However, not only is crime scene analysis beneficial to us socially, but also economically. Crime scene analysis helps to provide many people with jobs. These jobs include, but are not limited to police officers, detectives, and special investigators. These people help to better society by helping to find substantial evidence for crimes that can help to convict a person. They impact society everyday by trying to keep everyone a little bit safer.
Another issue is the practicality in DNA sampling and storage. The backlog of so many DNA samples waiting to be entered into the system is so huge that the statute of limitations has expired in many cases in which the evidence would have been useful for conviction. This accumulation of so many expired DNA samples is so costly to the government and country because the cases are not being processed fast enough, and by the time they get around to the case, the evidence has already expired. This means, they would have held a person for whatever amount of time before it took to process the case, and then they do not even have the proper evidence valid anymore in order to be able to convict the person. The government spends so much money on retaining the evidence and holding the person, and then they do not get around to convicting them in time. Even worse off, smaller countries that are still deveoloping do not have the economic means to support biotechnology innovations in the crime scene field. This is in part because of the fact that their begining economy cannot support any additional deveopmental programs; their number one priority is to get their country developed, not to technologically advance.
The DNA samples found in crime scene analysis is extremely vital. However, because of the many political, economical, social, and many other issues that come into play, the samples do not always end up being used. All of these other issues have such a large impact of DNA sampling and its effectiveness to our society.