That was a good article, and not as long as I feared from your gloss. The end of the article, with Furr leaving the AG's office and returning to the private sector seemed sour -- particularly since she'd updated jurisdictions to note only CODIS hits required notification.
Re: heebie's last in the OP: Sure, you are mostly getting initial reactions, but unless women follow up with the department later, there's no good way to determine how they feel about it later without doing harm to those who don't want to be reminded of it ever again. I think it's telling that (1) every woman of the group they initially contacted by phone refused permission to reopen their cases, and (2) of the 28 calls they got in response to the letters, none of them seem to have been particularly grateful for the information (or if they were, it didn't make it into the article). That would seem to suggest being a lot more cautious about who gets personally notified in the future.
From the reactions as reported it looks like the most sensible option would have been to contact only those people for whom it would make a difference: I.e. positive ID for a suspect not previously identified, and/or leading to the case moving forward. But that would have required a bit of effort so they just mechanically followed rules instead and didn't even do that right.
We in the colonies, sir, believe in a government of laws and not of men.
3. That was apparently the intent. The article pretty clearly states that no one was willing to admit authorship or support of the "notify everyone no matter the result" interpretation, and yet no one in the state government was willing to notify the police departments that that interpretation was not intended and wrong, even though it is in the law. Lisa Furr finally sent that notification and promptly resigned, but a lot of damage had been done.
One has to wonder what was going on behind the scenes at the AG's office.
4: or, as currently, a government of in-laws.
The reporter stood there in the police department office, looking at 300+ letters set to go out, and decided not to tell them that she'd uncovered a significant difference of opinion from the AG about the meaning of the law. She knew they didn't want to send all the letters, and were only doing it because they thought they had to. She knew, but didn't tell them, that they might well be wrong about whether they had to, and maybe ought to make a call to the AGs office, because she didn't want to become part of the story.
I suppose philosophy students work through this kind of thing by riding trolleys or something.
7.1 I could never be a reporter for that very reason.
The reporter stood there in the police department office, looking at 300+ letters set to go out, and decided not to tell them that she'd uncovered a significant difference of opinion from the AG about the meaning of the law. She knew they didn't want to send all the letters, and were only doing it because they thought they had to. She knew, but didn't tell them, that they might well be wrong about whether they had to, and maybe ought to make a call to the AGs office, because she didn't want to become part of the story.
I think the article ultimately leans in the direction of what Houston did:
Houston tried a different model. A hotline was set up and publicized, so that any victim who wanted information about their old kit could ask for it. Then, police and prosecutors combed through the CODIS hits and decided which cases actually had a chance of moving forward in the criminal justice system. Victims were notified only if their cases seemed "actionable." "What's at stake is the well-being and mental health of sexual assault victims," says Noël Busch-Armendariz, a researcher who was involved in Houston's process. "You never know where people are in their lives and what support systems they have or don't have ready for them."
But I think there is an intuitive moral argument for contacting everybody and that even though it was a lot of emotional work for that police department it is good, both for the story and for anybody thinking about the problem, to have an example of what is involved in trying to contact everyone.
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NM rubbing it out in under 4 minutes to Sir Roger Bannister.
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In his memory, I'm never going to run a 4 minute or less mile again.
3/5/7: yeah, I thought it was one of "maybe a tragedy, maybe a farce" stories of bureaucracy. No one wants to take credit for the policy, and it'll cause a fair amount of trauma and in the vast majority of cases won't help anything in particular. A key person in charge of how to do is gave conflicting advice while on her way out the door. But there's definitely a legal requirement to do something, and this is something, so...
Ironically, I can imagine a good reason for a "notify everyone" policy. After decades when rape complaints were ignored completely or handled lackadaisically - see for example the woman who reported a rape at a party and the detective at the time didn't bother recording the correct reason why she stopped cooperating with the investigation, or probably most of the 344 in general - maybe it didn't make sense for police forces to have discretion over that kind of thing. And there was a big backlog they wanted to clean up, so they just said "notify everyone, yes, everyone." But if any politician articulates why, it would sound like they hate the police.