Since 2010, ending the rape kit backlog has been the top advocacy priority of the Joyful Heart Foundation. In 2016, Joyful Heart launched a national campaign to eliminate the backlog based on six pillars of reform. The campaign has been incredibly successful, with reform spreading across the country. In fact, 43 states have passed at least one pillar of reform.
Ultimately, rape kit reform is designed to end the rape kit backlog and ensure it never happens again. Eliminating a state’s backlog of untested kits is a critical step to creating a path to healing for sexual assault survivors and safety to communities. Since our work to end the backlog began, eight states have successfully eliminated their backlogs and many more have begun testing the kits in their possession.
The first state to achieve this feat was Colorado in 2016. Since then, Kentucky (2017), Connecticut (2018), Oregon (2018), Washington D.C. (2018), Florida (2019), Virginia (2020), Utah (2020), Nevada (2020), and Montana (2020) have also cleared their backlogs. The size of a backlog varies from state to state. Connecticut, for example, uncovered a total of 1,188 kits in 2015 and completed testing of all in 2018. Florida, on the other hand, uncovered 13,435 backlogged kits and four years later cleared their backlog.
There are several common best practices that these states have shared with us over the years. Below, we summarize several to assist other states in their efforts:
What are the keys to clearing a state’s backlog of untested rape kits?
Inventory: The first step to ending a backlog is to carry out a comprehensive inventory of all untested rape kits in the state. In Kentucky, the Auditor General carried out such an audit. This included a survey of law enforcement agencies and hospitals to obtain initial numbers of untested kits and learn about each jurisdiction’s policies regarding sexual assault. They then paired this effort with visits to property evidence rooms, sheriffs’ offices, and police departments, and interviews with police officials, national experts, prosecutors, and local stakeholders. The audit in Kentucky not only represented an effort to gain a true scope of the backlog in the state, but also an attempt to understand the structural issues behind why the backlog existed in the first place, and how to prevent it moving forward.
Funding: All states that cleared their backlog received grants, such as those from the New York County District Attorney’s Office (DANY) or U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA)’s Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI) program. Many also appropriated public state funds to clear their backlog. Below are some examples of funding that states received:
- Colorado legislators appropriated $6,351,002 in funding to clear the state’s backlog of untested kits.
- Florida was awarded several grants from DANY to test backlogged kits.
- Utah used a combination of public funds (state legislators appropriated $750,000 to test backlogged kits in FY15) and grants (DANY and SAKI, totaling over $5,000,000).
Leadership: Leadership can come from many levels of government and local stakeholders. Many times central state figures such as a Governor, or an Attorney General, will take the lead on carrying out an inventory and begin to test backlogged kits. One such case is Virginia, where the Attorney General Mark Herring led the statewide inventory and secured funding to test over 2,000 kits. In the state of Connecticut, former governor Dan Molloy created a sexual assault kit working group to coordinate the testing and tracking of backlogged kits. During the 2016 legislative session, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi helped secure millions of state dollars to begin testing the state’s backlogged kits. In other occasions, legislators like Representatives Angela Romero and Todd Weiler in Utah, and Senator Denise Angel in Kentucky, were elemental in obtaining funding and pushing for the inventory and testing of backlogged kits.
Task forces: Nearly all states that have counted and tested all backlogged kits in their state have created a task force to do so. In addition to Connecticut, Oregon legislators passed S.B.1571, which established “The Task Force on the Testing of Sexual Assault Forensic Evidence Kits.” One of the main responsibilities of the Task Force was to identify and pursue grants and other funding sources in order to eliminate the backlog of untested sexual assault forensic evidence kits, reduce testing wait times, provide victim notification protocols, and improve efficiencies in the kit testing process. In Washington, D.C., the city council created a task force and hired an independent consultant to assess Metropolitan Police Department’s policies, practices, and training around sexual violence. In 2017, The Kentucky Attorney General’s office provided funding to create the state’s SAFE kit backlog research project to examine the issue of unsubmitted kits that were collected but never submitted to a crime lab for analysis.
When jurisdictions test every kit, they solve crimes, bring answers and a path to justice for survivors, take criminals off the streets, and exonerate the innocent. Joyful Heart commends these states for taking on the monumental task of testing all of their backlogged kits. While there is much work to be done to end the rape kit backlog across the country — and additional pillars of reform to be undertaken to ensure that it never reoccurs — the elimination of a state’s backlog is a clear sign that state and local leaders take sexual assault seriously. Survivors deserve nothing less.