Rape Kits Backlog in US Delays Justice

Posted on October 15, 2008 in Latest News

Rape is quite rampant in the United States. Every 2 minutes a rape occurs. Every year, over 200,000 rape victims report the crime to the police. Most of these women agree to the setting up of a rape kit, which happens to be an invasive process to collect physical evidence, (DNA materials are included) which can turn out to be a six hours affair.

Most victims do not realize that the rape kit often remains with the police untested in their lockers. The backlog of these rape kits came into prominent focus during Debbie Smith’s testimony( a rape victim) before the Congress. Since then the Debbie Smith DNA Backlog Program was started in 2004 with the goal of clearing 400,000 rape kits backlog. But the program included the backlog of other crimes as well and as a result many of the rapes cases continued to lag behind. Although rapes were being committed much too often, police action and trials got delayed due to the backlog of rape kits.

Rape kits help the police in matching the profiles with the DNA profiles in national database of the FBI. In most states, the victims need not be informed whether their rape kits have been processed or not and the victims remain ignorant of the delay. The victim considers this silence on the part of the police as being unsuccessful results of the rape kits.

Most states claim that rape kits were not processed due to financial constraints. Congress needs to ensure that 30% of grants received by a state should be allocated towards clearing the backlog of rape kits.

The clearance of the backlog of the rape kits would definitely ensure justice for the rape victims. As it is many go unreported and those reported should not be delayed due to inaction on the part of the police.

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One Response to “Rape Kits Backlog in US Delays Justice”

  1. Worldwide Discrimination Against Women Still Continues, Says UN Says:
    October 20th, 2008 at 12:31 pm

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