A criminal justice professor at Michigan State University (MSU) is committed to reforming how sex crimes are handled by seeking to better understand the behavior, patterns and criminal histories of offenders identified as suspects. Do these offenders eventually face justice and/or are prevented from perpetrating more crimes?
Ultimately, Karen Holt, assistant professor in the School of Criminal Justice, says her research seeks to bring accountability to sex crime offenders.
Not only does Holt work collaboratively with investigators, but her research also includes testing backlogged rape kits across the state of Michigan as part of the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI). Testing of backlogged rape kits in Michigan (and across the entirety of the U.S.) became infamous in 2009 when prosecutors in Detroit discovered 11,000 untested sexual assault evidence kits, some dating as far back as the 1980's. SAKI was passed in 2015 to address the problem overdue rape kit backlog, create a coordinated response to sexual assault and provide forensic training and funding. Through SAKI and other grants, the state of Michigan has reduced the number of untested sexual assault evidence collection kits held by law enforcement by 95% from 2018 to 2022.
“MSU has been at the forefront of the Michigan SAKI research since the beginning, with MSU professor Rebecca Campbell and her team’s groundbreaking work,” Holt said. “My work extends this by looking at offenders’ behavior and patterns and the investigative response to them.”
Ensuring accountability
The Michigan State Police, through funding by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, approached Holt to help examine their case files. Together, they are working closely with the Ingham County SAKI team to see if suspects of cold case sex crimes were identified, what their criminal histories look like, and what the resolution of these cases has been.
Holt has been examining DNA evidence, police reports and criminal background data to identify these offenders and will soon begin to interview identified offenders. Specifically, she hopes to learn whether offenders committed additional crimes and if they were prosecuted.
“A major point of my work has been to examine what happens when offenders are not held accountable for their crimes,” Holt said. “For me, being offender-focused means putting a magnifying glass right on the person who committed the crime.”
Shifting future perspective
Holt’s work is important for not only demonstrating what happens when individuals are not held accountable for their crimes, but to bring changes and reform to the criminal justice system—especially when it comes to sex crimes.
Holt says she is focused on creating ways to bring researchers and practitioners together through partnerships, training and education to shift the conversation away from blaming survivors to understanding the ways that offenders manipulate and exploit them.
The testing of a sexual assault kit costs just under $1,000, but each assault costs victims around $200,000 in terms of both physical and emotional pain, according to research.