Transcripts of the Attorney General's Initiative on DNA Laboratory Backlogs (AGID-LAB) Working Group

Tuesday, October 22, 2002

CLOSING REMARKS

MS. HART: Well, thank you all for this. I have to tell you this was really an enjoyable two days for me. I very much enjoyed hearing you talk about this. This is an issue that is very, very near and dear to my heart, I care greatly about it, and every time I'm with you people I'm always amazed how I walk away learning a lot of new stuff, and it reminds me of how much more I need to learn. So I look forward to an ongoing process where I continue to pick your brains for your great insights and wisdom.

Thank you very much for taking time from your schedules to come here. I know this was not easy, and we have greatly benefited from that, and I think you all have benefited from hearing from each other. A special thank you to the gentlemen from South Africa, who traveled so far and really gave us a lot to think about. It was well worth it. Plus we didn't have to travel as far, and it's very, very much appreciated and extremely helpful.

A couple of things just to follow up. I wanted to especially thank our staff here at NIJ, Lisa and Lois and Chris and we've got Nick here as well as Robin, who has brought her significant other is back there, too. Mr. Jones is back there, too. I very much appreciate all the work that they did to put this together, and I always benefit greatly from their work and their wisdom. They're a terrific bunch of people to work with, and I'm extremely lucky, and thanks, Glenn, for being the ringmaster.

A couple of other things I just wanted to mention. We do have for your enjoyment a new NIJ publication, "Using DNA to Solve Cold Cases." There are copies available here if you haven't picked this up. By the way, this is part of the ongoing new look to NIJ publications that you will see. We have been doing a lot of work especially to revamp publications so that they're concise and written in plain English, which most of the DNA ones, really technical ones were done that way anyway, but this is part of an ongoing effort by NIJ to make sure that our publications are much more user friendly to the practitioner community and my personal pet peeve about making sure that people write in plain English instead of using 20 dollar words.

So we're very pleased about this, and Lisa's people have done some good work. You will see it's from the National Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence, which we continue to benefit from the insights that were developed during that commission.

So everybody, thank you all. We will be getting in touch with you just to follow up on some of this. Have a very safe trip home, and we look forward to talking to you in the future. Thank you.

MS. JONES: It's 4:15. We are opening the floor for public comment in accordance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act. Hearing no comment, the meeting is officially adjourned.