There are a lot of opinions and news stories about rape kit backlogs. Many people advocate more money for crime labs. Some talk about outsourcing rape kits to private laboratories. The blog article below even advocates making sure tax money already earmarked for law enforcement is channeled to helping reduce the rape kit backlog problem:
One of the repairable problems is the backlog at crime laboratories across the nation. Most of the labs are part of law enforcement agencies. Because of relatively small budget shortfalls, many of the labs encounter testing backlogs that stretch for years. If the tests could be run within a day or so, police would be able to identify rapists, murderers and other criminals quickly. The arrests that would follow would mean fewer rape victims, fewer murder victims.
In hundreds of jurisdictions, however, legislators who allocate money and law-enforcement bureaucrats who channel the allocations give short shrift to crime labs. Instead, money ends up paying for prison systems that do little but send criminals back into society, so-called drug wars that never yield meaningful victories, and other idiotic uses.
Read more here on Truth/Slant.
One thing that isn’t talked about very often is the fact that crime labs don’t always legally have access to all the rape kits in the “backlog”. Depending on the jurisdiction, charges must be filed in order for the rape kit to be turned over to law enforcement officials. A victim of rape, who has specimens collected in a rape kit, must also file charges. If not, many times the rape kits must legally stay with the health care agency that collected the kit.
The kit is now part of the “backlog”, but the crime lab couldn’t analyze it, even if they didn’t have a backlog.
Rape kit backlogs are problems nationally, but take the number with a grain of salt, and an eye of skepticism.
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