The FBI launched the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) in 1998, a national DNA database infrastructure connecting federal, state, and local forensic laboratories across the United States. CODIS enabled the computerised matching of DNA profiles from crime scene evidence against profiles of convicted offenders and arrestees held in state databases. By the 2010s, CODIS had generated over three hundred thousand matches assisting in criminal investigations, becoming the primary national DNA evidence infrastructure for American law enforcement.

CODIS's creation expanded the DNA evidence culture that had emerged from the early Jeffreys discoveries into a comprehensive national surveillance infrastructure. The system represents a convergence of biological and digital evidence gathering that contemporary crime fiction writers must navigate. It also intensified debates about racial equity in DNA databases — since communities of colour are disproportionately represented in criminal databases — debates that contemporary Black American poets and writers have engaged with directly.