Accountability

Public Records Requests

Joyful Heart’s first initiative to shine a light on the nationwide backlog was The Accountability Project. The focus has been to understand the scope of the problem by making public the numbers of untested kits in jurisdictions across the country. Working with our pro bono partner Goodwin LLP, we have issued public records requests to police departments in more than 100 jurisdictions to reveal whether they possess any untested rape kits. So far, we have uncovered more than 52,000 untested rape kits in 67 jurisdictions in 29 states through public records requests.

So far, we have uncovered more than 52,000 untested rape kits in 67 jurisdictions in 25 states through public records requests.

When laws to reform rape kit processing are enacted, the public must be assured that these laws are being implemented correctly and are complied with by all stakeholders. Our team serves as a watchful guardian of rape kit reform laws by monitoring deadlines for inventory completion dates, rape kit submission laws, processing turnaround times, and more.

Through this work, we have uncovered instances of noncompliance by state agencies as well as other responsible parties across the country. Joyful Heart takes steps to hold noncompliant entities responsible for the full implementation of these reforms. One notable example of noncompliance occurred in California. In April 2020, the state’s Attorney General released the one-time statewide audit mandated by AB3118. The law states that “each law enforcement agency, medical, forensic laboratory, and any other facility that receives, maintains, stores, or preserves sexual assault evidence kits shall conduct an audit of all untested sexual assault kits in their possession.” However, only 149 law enforcement agencies and crime labs actually participated in the audit, while there are over 500 police agencies in the state. The report also notes that no medical facilities provided information for this report. Thus, while the audit yielded a total of 13,929 untested kits in California, we know that this number is likely to represent only a fraction of the true total number of untested kits in the state.

Joyful Heart has uncovered similar occurrences in New York. There, some law enforcement agencies are failing to report their kits as part of the statewide inventory. NY law (S.B.980) clearly states that “Each POLICE agency [involved in a law enforcement function in the state]  AND PROSECUTORIAL AGENCY shall report to the division on a quarterly basis, in writing, on (i) the number of all the sexual offense evidence kits it received, (ii) the number of such kits it submitted to a forensic laboratory for processing, (iii) the number of kits in its custody or control that have not been processed for testing, and (iv) the length of time between receipt of any such sexual offense evidence kit and the submission of any such kit to the forensic laboratory” However, reviewing the 2019 inventory report, we can see that multiple agencies did not report their kits to the Division of Criminal Justice Services. 

Other noteworthy examples of noncompliance we’ve identified include Texas and Massachusetts. In 2019, Texas passed an important piece of rape kit legislation, HB8. This law calls for a one-time audit of untested kits. It reads: “(a) A law enforcement agency in possession of an evidence collection kit that has not been submitted for laboratory analysis shall: (1) not later than December 15, 2019, submit to the department a list of the agency’s active criminal cases for which an evidence collection kit collected on or before September 1, 2019, has not yet been submitted for laboratory analysis.” Police departments in Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio, among other large jurisdictions in the state did not respond to the audit.

In 2018, Massachusetts legislators enacted S2371 which mandates the submission of all backlogged kits and calls for statewide inventory of unsubmitted rape kits with a report due annually on or before September 1st, among other things. However, the language of the legislation unintentionally excluded the vast majority of untested kits from the S2371’s requirements, as we uncovered after sending public records requests to the state lab. Kits were submitted to the lab, but not tested. As a result, these kits were not included in the inventory as unsubmitted. Following our public records requests, local investigative journalists also sent public information requests to the state lab, uncovering more than 6000 untested kits. In 2021, we worked with state legislators to pass a new bill with updated language, requiring all kits, including at the lab, to be tested. The bill also allocated $8 million in the state budget to support these efforts.