Along with other survivor advocacy organizations, including the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN), the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence (NAESV), the National Organization for Victim Assistance (NOVA), Healing Exists After Rape Trauma (HEART) and the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault (TAASA), Joyful Heart supports the Sexual Assault Forensic Evidence Registry Act of 2012 (SAFER Act), S.3250. The SAFER Act, sponsored by Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), will help state and local law enforcement agencies to end both crime lab and police storage rape kit backlogs by:

  • Increasing the percentage of Debbie Smith Act grant funds that must be spent on analyzing untested crime scene evidence;
  • Providing state and local governments with funding to conduct one-year audits of the untested sexual assault evidence in their possession;
  • Creating a national database maintained by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to track those audits, and
  • Requiring greater tracking of how Debbie Smith Act grant funds are spent.

The SAFER Act amends the Debbie Smith Act, which provides federal grants to eligible states and local governments to conduct analyses of backlogged DNA evidence. Joyful Heart encourages Congress to pass the SAFER Act because it addresses several concerns we have about the current version of the Debbie Smith Act.

The SAFER More >