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KBI: More Than 2,000 Sexual Assault Kits Statewide Not Submitted For Testing

ojp.gov

The Kansas Bureau of Investigation announced Tuesday that it’s completed a statewide inventory of sexual assault kits.

In 2014, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation started surveying local law enforcement agencies to find out how many sexual assault kits hadn’t been submitted for testing in a lab. They found more than 2,000.

Katie Whisman, who coordinates KBI’s Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, says kits go untested for a lot of reasons: Policies for submission can vary, and the capacity of forensic labs is limited. But that’s not all.

"We do believe that a lack of societal awareness regarding the truths around sexual assault, and the impact that those traumatic experiences have on victims, do influence the criminal justice outcome of those cases," she says.

Just over half of the 2,000-some untested kits have now been submitted to the lab for testing. Federal grant money is helping fund overtime work at KBI’s forensic lab.