| TO: | Honorable John Whitmire, Chair, Senate Committee on Criminal Justice |
| FROM: | John S O'Brien, Director, Legislative Budget Board |
| IN RE: | SB1616 by West (Relating to the collection, storage, preservation, retrieval, and destruction of biological evidence.), Committee Report 1st House, Substituted |
The bill would amend the Code of Criminal Procedure to provide certain guidelines and require the Department of Public Safety (DPS) to adopt rules regarding the collection, storage, preservation, and retrieval of biological evidence. These guidelines and rules would apply to certain governmental or public entities and individuals charged with the collection, storage, preservation, or retrieval of biological evidence. The bill would take effect immediately upon a two-thirds vote of all the members in each house. Otherwise, the bill would take effect September 1, 2011. This analysis assumes DPS could implement the provisions of the bill within existing resources.
According to Texas Association of Counties, Ward County reported potentially significant costs associated with complying with the requirements of the bill as substituted. Both the county hospital and district attorney would be required to purchase new refrigerators for storing evidence, additional storage space, and new tracking software to track when a piece of biological evidence were eligible to be destroyed; however Ward County was unable to estimate a cost.
The Institute for Forensic Sciences of Harris County estimates the costs of the substitute to include 75 additional freezers capable of saving biological samples at temperatures of -20 degrees Celsius ($650 each) for a one-time cost of $113,750, in addition to one-time costs for the construction of additional temperature-controlled space for the additional freezers, estimated to total at least $3,500,000. Operating expenses are estimated to be at least $20,000 annually. Harris County noted that these figures assume no increase to the number of frozen biological samples that are currently being collected.
| Source Agencies: | 405 Department of Public Safety
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| LBB Staff: | JOB, ESi, KKR
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