II. Methodology

For this report, Human Rights Watch conducted 130 telephone or in-person interviews with: eight police officers, six chiefs of police or police executives, twelve crime lab personnel, eight crime lab directors or officials, ten sexual assault forensic nurses, five rape treatment providers, twenty-four elected officials from the cities and County, three victims of rape, one family member of a rape victim who has been affected by the rape kit backlog, thirteen rape victim advocates, nine state or city sexual assault organization directors or senior staff, fifteen national sexual assault or victims' rights organization directors or senior staff, three senior staff at the US Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs, five attorneys, four local newspaper reporters who have covered the issue of rape kit backlogs extensively, eight statisticians from state and city criminal justice statistics offices, and four senior staff at the ACLU of Southern California.

We conducted on-site visits to the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles Sheriff's Department crime labs and evidence storage facilities.

We submitted requests under the California Public Records Act to the Police Department, the Sheriff's Department, and all 47 police departments of the cities in Los Angeles County with independent police departments. We requested rape reporting, arrest, prosecution, conviction, and dismissal rates, and documents pertaining to the collection, processing, and backlog of rape kits.

We read 52 academic studies on the prevalence and incidence of rape in the US, the factors that lead to low reporting, arrest, prosecution, and conviction rates for the crime of rape, and how rape kit evidence affects the likelihood that a case will move forward in the criminal justice system. We also read four studies about the civil liberties and civil rights implications of local, state, and national DNA databanks.

We gave the Los Angeles Police and Sheriff's Departments a copy of the report to review. This report is current as of March 2009.