Parentage Testing and Kinship Analysis

Most publically funded forensic DNA laboratories in the United States do not apply their DNA typing skills to cases that involve questioned family relationships, choosing to contract the testing or perhaps the statistical calculations with private laboratories that specialize in relationship testing. This viewpoint is slowly changing due to the recent interest in familial searching of CODIS databases as part of the investigative process and in identifying human remains. These applications and others highlight the need for crime labs to understand the methodological and statistical approach to family relationship testing that is the focus of this chapter.