Auditor General DePasquale: New State Data Shows Where Rape Kits Are Still Backlogged; Victims Deserve Chance at Justice

May 01 2019

Auditor General DePasquale: New State Data Shows Where Rape Kits Are Still Backlogged; Victims Deserve Chance at Justice

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HARRISBURG (May 1, 2019) – Auditor General Eugene DePasquale today said newly released data shows that 60 percent of the state’s 245 backlogged rape kits remain in the hands of law enforcement instead of at crime labs, where they belong.

“The law clearly states that, once consent for testing is received, law enforcement must submit a kit to an approved forensic lab within 15 days,” DePasquale said. “I’m urging police departments and prosecutors to make sure they’re doing everything possible to move these cases forward.”

Released today, the Department of Health's annual report shows a total of 245 backlogged kits as of Dec. 31, 2018 – a 90 percent decrease from three years ago, when more than 3,000 kits were awaiting testing. A backlogged kit is one that has been waiting 12 months or longer to be tested.

“While this progress is commendable, hundreds of people have waited more than a year to find out what evidence, if any, their kits contain,” DePasquale said. “These brave victims underwent grueling physical exams not only for the sake of their own cases, but also to potentially help protect others from being assaulted.”

Of Pennsylvania’s roughly 1,100 local law enforcement agencies, 1,060 reported their kit numbers – a 112 percent increase over the 499 agencies that reported in 2016, the first year the statewide report was released.

However, DePasquale said, simply reporting that untested kits exist is not enough. Instead, law enforcement must send these kits to one of the state’s three public forensic crime labs, where they can be processed and have any usable DNA uploaded into the FBI’s national DNA database, known as CODIS.

“Some of these law enforcement agencies are holding onto a dozen or more kits,” DePasquale said. “That is patently unacceptable, and it must be corrected. When a victim has agreed to allow testing to occur, it needs to take place as quickly as possible.”

The DOH report also highlights that Philadelphia Police Department and Pennsylvania State Police’s crime labs, which had no backlogged kits, were processing all new rape kits within three to six months.

DePasquale first raised this issue in 2016 when he released a special report on the state’s untested rape kits. It found that communication failures, bureaucratic breakdowns and resource shortages led to a backlog of untested kits, some dating back to the 1990s. In the years since, the number of kits awaiting testing has trended steadily downward.

Learn more about the Department of the Auditor General online at www.paauditor.gov.

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Editor’s Note: The following is a list of where backlogged kits were reported as of Dec. 31, 2018: