What Is the Backlog?

“To me, the backlog is one of the clearest and most shocking demonstrations of how we regard these crimes in our society. Testing rape kits sends a fundamental and crucial message to victims of sexual violence: You matter. What happened to you matters. Your case matters. For that reason, The Joyful Heart Foundation, which I founded in 2004, has made ending the rape kit backlog our #1 advocacy priority.”

Mariska Hargitay

Every 68 seconds, someone is sexually assaulted in the United States.

In order to understand what the rape kit backlog is, it is important to know what a rape kit is, and why it is important. After a sexual assault, the survivor’s body becomes a part of the crime scene. If a survivor reports the assault to the police and goes to a medical facility or rape crisis center, the survivor can choose to have a medical professional photograph, swab, and conduct an invasive and exhaustive examination of the survivor’s entire body for DNA evidence left behind by the attacker—a process that takes four to six hours to complete. That evidence is collected and preserved in a sexual assault evidence kit, commonly referred to as a rape kit. When tested, DNA evidence contained by rape kits can be an incredibly powerful tool to solve and prevent crime.

Despite this, it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of rape kits sit untested in police department and crime lab storage facilities across the country in what is referred to as the “rape kit backlog” or the “untested rape kit backlog.”

The rape kit backlog comprises two distinct, but related problems:

1. Rape kits are collected and booked into evidence, but detectives and/or prosecutors do not request DNA analysis. These kits may remain in a police evidence storage facility, hospital, or rape crisis center indefinitely. This is often referred to as the “untested” or “unsubmitted” rape kit backlog. The Joyful Heart Foundation defines an untested and/or backlogged kit as one that has not been submitted to an accredited public or private crime lab for testing within 30 days of being booked into evidence.
2. Rape kits are collected and sent to the crime lab for testing but languish in a queue, awaiting DNA analysis for months or even years. In fact, in some cases, rape kits may sit at crime labs indefinitely. The Joyful Heart Foundation defines a “backlogged” kit at the DNA testing lab as one that has not been tested within 30 days of receipt by the lab.

In this arena, language is very important and may vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In some, the word “backlog” will only mean kits that are sitting untested at the lab. In many jurisdictions, the kits sitting untested in law enforcement custody will likely be called “unsubmitted” kits.

Every rape kit booked into evidence and connected to a reported sexual assault should be submitted to a crime lab for testing, and crime labs must commit to testing rape kit evidence in a timely manner.

Since many jurisdictions do not have systems for counting or tracking rape kits, we cannot be sure of the total number of untested rape kits nationwide. Additionally, there is no federal law mandating the tracking and testing of rape kits. It is estimated, however, that there are hundreds of thousands of untested kits in police and crime lab storage facilities throughout the country.