FAILURE TO FUND CRIME LAB CONSTITUTES AN ACT OF STATE NEGLIGENCE

Flagging tax collections are forcing state officials to reassess their
priorities for spending. Just this week, Gov. Sonny Purdue ordered
department heads to cut their budgets by 2.5 percent and find ways to
reduce next year's spending plans by 5 percent.

We applaud the governor's prudence in acting decisively to deal with
revenue shortfalls in the months that lie ahead.

And while few state officials are willing to admit it, there is fat that
can be cut without hurting performance or leaving needs unmet.
Non-essential travel, and perks such as state-provided vehicles, cell
phones, lap-top computers and other luxuries readily come to mind as
spending reduction targets.

But there's one area of state government - law enforcement - that must be
spared from further cuts. To the contrary, this is an area where funding
already is inadequate and where additional appropriations are urgently
needed and deserved.

And nowhere in state law enforcement is the need for operating income more
critical than in the system of statewide crime labs run by the Georgia
Bureau of Investigation. Inadequate funding has left the crime labs far
short of the number of trained personnel to keep up with the demands of the
justice system.

Crime lab officials say they have a backlog of cases and that more than
11,000 of these have been pending for more than 30 days. To catch up, at
least 109 more forensic scientists, technicians and lab workers are needed
to handle the workload.

The price tag for additional personnel is $4.8 million. That figure would
be much less had not the crime lab budget already suffered a $3.4 million
cut over the last two years.

An understaffed crime lab operation will have serious consequences for the
people of Georgia. The GBI already has notified law enforcement agencies
that because of the backlog of cases, it will no longer test cases of
suspected marijuana if less than 10 pounds are confiscated.

Ten pounds is a lot of marijuana, and people caught with that much in their
possession are serious about dealing. Yet, if you can't prove that seized
contraband is a drug, judges are going to set free a lot of potentially
dangerous criminals.

Drug pushers aren't the only offenders who'll benefit from the personnel
problems at the crime lab. Delays at the crime lab translate into trial
delays. Unreasonable delays in going to trial are grounds for dismissal of
criminal charges in our system of justice.

Such delays can work against defendants as well. Erroneous eyewitness
reports and faulty evidence have kept innocent people in jail for extended
periods of time when DNA evidence and other crime lab reports could prove
they had been falsely accused.

Ironically, Georgia has spent millions of dollars over the past several
years to construct new crime lab facilities around the state, but now that
they're built, there's not enough money to hire personnel to adequately
staff them.

Despite all the talk of revenue shortfalls, the state maintains a rainy day
reserve fund which can be tapped into if necessary. In any society, keeping
criminals off the streets is a necessary function of government, and in a
court system that rightfully demands proof of guilt, an efficient forensic
criminal science operation is absolutely essential to establishing that proof.

It is imperative that state government officials act immediately to provide
the funding needed to handle the demands put on Georgia's state crime lab.