Skip to Content

Partial Matches

CODIS Searches and Partial Matches, cont.

a graph of a father with three sons, one of whom is not the donor of a DNA sample, but the others who mayn be.

Partial matches may link a close relative (generally, father-to-son and/or brother-to-brother relationships) and provide investigative leads. However, moderate stringency searches have demonstrated very low efficiency in locating true relatives in offender databases.2

Partial matches are identified by an analyst who reviews candidate matches after the CODIS search is complete. A partial match occurs when the offender profile is excluded as the perpetrator because it does not match the crime scene profile, but the analyst identifies a sufficient number of alleles in common between the offender and crime scene profile to believe that a family member of the offender may be the true perpetrator.

Click to view a loci chart representing a partial match.

2 Bruce Budowle et al.: Clarification of Statistical Issues Related to the Operation of CODIS PDF download: 120kB


Go to the next page. Go back one page. Go to the home page.