Los Angeles Addresses Backlog in Testing Evidence from Rape Cases

Los Angeles officials have taken steps to test forensic evidence in rape cases in a timely way, in response to Human Rights Watch's research and advocacy. DNA evidence, critical for prosecuting rape cases, is often collected through an invasive process with the victim's consent after a sexual assault and stored as a "rape kit." We found that the Los Angeles Police Department had a backlog of more than 7,000 rape kits that had never been tested for DNA evidence, and that at least 217 of these kits had passed the 10-year limit for use in prosecution. Moreover, we found that the department had failed to spend federal money that it received to test rape kits. We met with dozens of officials to alert them to the backlog, published op-eds, and successfully pressed the LA Times to write an editorial on the backlog and its implications for survivors of rape. This prompted the LA Police Chief to set up a task force to investigate the department's DNA lab. In addition, the LA Sheriff's Department, which previously would not disclose how many untested rape kits it was storing, finally admitted to a backlog of 5,000 kits, announced it would test them, and said it would carry out a plan for testing rape kits in a timely manner, in accordance with Human Rights Watch's recommendations. The National Institute of Justice has estimated that at least 400,000 rape kits are sitting untested in police stations and crime labs throughout the United States. We will continue to press law enforcement and policy-makers across the country to take note of the seriousness of this problem so that they, too, fulfill their responsibility to find and punish perpetrators of rape.