A Sexual Assault Kit Partnership

• NCJ Number: 249468
• Author(s): Gerald LaPorte; Heather Waltke; Heather LaSalle; Tina Delgado
• Date Published: November 2015
• Length: 1 page
• Agencies: NIJ
• Publication Type: Program/Project Description; Presentation (Multimedia)

Annotation

This video and accompanying transcript contain presentations by two representatives of the National Institute of Justice's (NIJ's) Office of Investigative and Forensic Science and two representatives of the FBI laboratory, who discuss the features and anticipated benefits of the NIJ-FBI Sexual Assault Kit Partnership.

Abstract

This partnership, was initiated by NIJ based on its finding that large numbers of sexual assault kits nationwide have not been submitted by law enforcement agencies to forensic laboratories for testing. Under the NIJ-FBI partnership, the FBI has agreed to use its resources to test some of these untested sexual assault kits from all across the country. NIJ, in consultation with the FBI regarding the evidence collected and testing procedures used, will develop best practices that will assist jurisdictions throughout the country in developing efficient and effective procedures for processing and testing sexual assault kits. One of the benefits of the NIJ-FBI partnerships is that jurisdictions who send untested sexual assault kits (some are 10-15 years old) to be tested by the FBI may receive valuable information in a "cold" case that leads to an arrest. Another anticipated benefit from the partnership is that forensic laboratories throughout the country will draw on lessons learned by the FBI in improving the processing of sexual assault kits, thus reducing existing backlogs of untested kits and preventing recurrences of such backlogs. The NIJ-FBI partnership has already produced some of these benefits. These are cited in the video.