August 26, 2009
Section 218 rewrites D.C. Official Code § 22-4151 in its entirety and does two things at once. First, it replaces the 46-paragraph enumeration with a categorical structure: (1) any felony; (2) any offense punishable by more than one year; then five retained misdemeanor sex offenses (§§ 22-1312(b), 22-2201, 22-3102, 22-3006, 22-3010.01); then attempt and conspiracy — a substantial net expansion that also reverses the 2001 narrowing of misdemeanor sexual abuse. Second, it adds the familial-search prohibition now at § 22-4151(b): “DNA collected by an agency of the District of Columbia shall not be searched for the purpose of identifying a family member related to the individual from whom the DNA sample was acquired.” This is one of the few outright statutory bans on familial searching in the country, enacted in the same section as the largest expansion of the collection population.