The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs), a program from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), part of the Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, has been helping to resolve long-term missing, unidentified, and unclaimed persons cases since 2007. It connects criminal justice agencies, forensic scientists, and families nationwide with information and resources to resolve these cases.

NamUs does not represent the true scope of missing and unidentified persons in the United States. NIJ designed NamUs to support state, tribal, and local case investigations, not as an authoritative source on the extent or nature of missing persons or the unidentified remains problem. In addition, the use of the NamUs program by law enforcement, medical examiners, and coroners is largely voluntary. Even when state, tribal, and local authorities have mandated the use of NamUs, it’s challenging for authorities to enforce compliance.

NamUs is not a law enforcement operation. The responsibility to report and enter data sits with the public, law enforcement, medical examiners, and coroners. The authority to verify, investigate, and discuss specific cases rests with the professional users. As of May 8, 2023, the NamUs database had over 23,000 active missing persons cases, 14,000 unidentified persons cases, and 15,000 unclaimed persons cases.

NamUs offers a wide range of services, including an online database of missing person information; forensic services, such as dental record matching and fingerprint and DNA analysis; investigative support; and public and professional user training. All these services are free of charge.

In April 2021, Research Triangle Institute International (RTI), under a contract from NIJ, took over the management of the NamUs program from the University of North Texas Health Science Center, which had managed NamUs under a cooperative agreement. RTI continues to provide the services that NamUs stakeholders have become accustomed to, such as case support through regional program specialists. These specialists ensure that the information in each NamUs record as complete as possible by assisting with user registration, case entry, collection and submission of biometric records and samples, and other tasks. A Complete record can better help investigators resolve cases. RTI also continues to provide analytical case support, including searching criminal justice, government, and proprietary commercial databases for indications of life, and locating contact information for family members to facilitate DNA collections and next-of-kin notifications.

NamUs will also continue to provide advanced forensic services in forensic anthropology, odontology, fingerprinting, and traditional DNA testing. NamUs uses an overlapping services strategy (OSS) to ensure the program has case management, investigation support, and forensic service providers ready to accommodate fluctuations in caseloads as the need arises. With the OSS strategy, NamUs will manage service providers across multiple organizations and states to prevent a single service provider from becoming a bottleneck for any one discipline.

Last year, NIJ created a sample tracking system that streamlined all forensic services and analytical requests submitted to NamUs. The Total Requirement for Unified Sample Tracking (TRUST) System has helped process more than 2,700 forensic and analytical service requests. Approximately 37% and 34% of these requests were for traditional DNA services and fingerprint services, respectively.

In March 2023, RTI completed agreements with the BODE Technology Group and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Crime Laboratory to resume traditional DNA services. For calendar year 2023, NamUs will be able to analyze 25 human remains cases and 400 family reference samples and enter them into CODIS. This isn’t nearly enough to meet the demand.

The success of using forensic genetic genealogy to resolve missing and unidentified persons cases has had a significant impact on NamUs’ resources. Forty-eight percent of forensic genetic genealogy cases that were submitted from October 1, 2022, through September 30, 2023, resulted in a database hit or confirmed identification. In comparison, the percentage of identifications or exclusions using fingerprint (10%) and odontology (19%) matches were much lower. However, fingerprint and odontology services require far fewer resources and have shorter turnaround times than forensic genetic genealogy services. Additionally, before investigators can even consider cases for forensic genetic genealogy testing, they must have exhausted all possible leads, including fingerprint or dental exclusions, as appropriate.

NamUs continues to collaborate with the FBI’s Latent Print Unit to search all fingerprint images from unidentified decedents through the national Next Generation Identification system. On March 15, 2023, these efforts resulted in the 500th fingerprint identification since 2017. The oldest identified case dated back to 1971.

NamUs has been tasked, in federal legislation, with continuing to help resolve missing and unidentified persons cases. Each piece of legislation signed into law creates additional mandates for and burdens on available resources. Recent legislation includes tribal initiatives (Savanna’s Act and the Not Invisible Act), missing migrant initiatives (The Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains Act), and The Help Find the Missing Act (“Billy’s Law”).

As NamUs continues to become more widely recognized and used, NIJ hopes the program will continue to grow and offer more services to help law enforcement, medical examiners, and coroners resolve cases.

NIJ and RTI also continue to look at how to improve the databases. As these improvements roll out, NamUs will communicate with our professional and public stakeholders at conferences and trainings to ensure that their needs are being met.