STATE OF THE
BACKLOG

In 2016, the Joyful Heart Foundation launched its six pillar campaign to improve the way rape kits are handled nationwide and end the backlog of untested rape kits. Since then, we have helped pass 130 bills in 46 states affecting more than 321 million people and more than 136,000 survivors of reported rapes every year. Our campaign is one of the most successful state-level campaigns in history.

Apart from our legislative achievements, Joyful Heart has helped jurisdictions nationwide by raising awareness of the existence of the backlog, providing guidance and technical assistance to communities working to address their backlog, supplying information about best practices for notifying and working with survivors, and helping with funding efforts. Since 2013, 30 states have passed bills that grant state funds toward ending the backlog. These states, through senate and house bills, appropriations bills, and direct changes in the state budget, have allocated $231 million to end the backlog and test more than 156,000 kits.

In 2015, the Joyful Heart Foundation played a fundamental role in the creation of the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI), an important federal initiative for rape kit reform with then Vice President Biden. This program provided grants to communities to inventory untested rape kits, analyze those kits, investigate the resulting cases, prosecute offenders, and support survivors. This federal program has allowed jurisdictions to inventory more than 183,000 untested kits and send 90,000 kits for testing, resulting in more than 15,700 CODIS hits, almost 8,200 to serial violent offenders and 2,200 to serial sex offenders. 

Though Joyful Heart’s legislative campaign focuses mostly on state-level reform, we have also worked at the city and county level. Through public records requests, we have uncovered more than 52,000 untested rape kits in 67 jurisdictions in 29 states.

This report will provide a review of the rape kit reform field, focusing on where we have been and where we are headed. It provides not only lessons learned, but also how we can continue to make progress to eliminate the backlog of untested rape kits nationwide.