If DNA is exposed to the elements or to fire for any length of time, degradation can occur due to bacterial, biochemical, or oxidative processes. Also, there may be environmental contaminants present in the forensic evidence. In such specimens, a loss of signal is typically observed with larger sized STR products. In situations where samples are so badly degraded that STR analysis is not possible, sequence analysis of hypervariable regions of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is typically used; however, such testing is time consuming, and the data are not as powerful for identification purposes as a full 13-locus STR match. Another approach in attempting to recover information from degraded DNA samples is to reduce the size of the PCR products by moving primers in as close as possible to the STR repeat region. New multiplex PCR sets of commonly used STR markers have been developed to produce PCR products that are reduced in size when compared to standard commercial STR kits. The reduction in size of these amplicons can facilitate the examination and analysis of degraded DNA evidence by improving amplification efficiency. The current report describes the initial efforts made by the authors to define new primer sets for the commonly used STR markers in human identity testing. These primer sets have been developed into several miniplexes that contain between three and six loci. Comparison studies in over 100 samples have confirmed that these miniSTR primers can provide fully concordant results with commercial STR kits and can provide improved signals from degraded DNA specimens. 3 tables, 6 figures, and 32 references