Faced with a rape kit backlog inching dangerously close to four-digits, the City of Phoenix has approved $3.4 million in funding to help alleviate the backlog through outsourcing.
As of July 31, 2023, the Phoenix Police Department had 835 rape kits waiting to be tested, up from the reported 771 untested in May. Of those DNA kits, 533 remained with Phoenix police while 282 of them had been submitted to an outsourced laboratory but had not been tested.
During the City Council Formal Meeting on Monday afternoon, officials approved a request to allow “additional expenditures” up to $3.4 million for DNA analysis. Existing contracts totaled $815,000, so the increase is a substantial one.
“These contracts allow the Police Department to outsource biological screening and/or DNA analysis on evidence and provide analysis of evidentiary material associated with criminal investigations, capacity enhancement, backlog reduction, cold case resolution and sexual assault kit testing,” reads the City of Phoenix’s agenda notes.
The additional spending extends the Phoenix Police Department’s DNA testing contracts with DNA Labs International, Marshall University and Bode Cellmark Forensics.
The funds, which were available in the Phoenix Police Department’s budget, will not exceed $4,215,000 altogether.
According to ABC15 Arizona, the backlog was much smaller pre-pandemic, topping out at 180 kits. However, police said staff shortages and complications during the pandemic caused the number to rise.
Additionally, while violent crime is down 2% overall in Phoenix, the number of rapes has gone up. From January to July 2022, there were 512 reported rapes in Phoenix. In the same 6-month period in 2023, there have been 563 rapes—51 more.
“With this increase in rape cases, comes an increase in sexual assault evidence collection kits needing analysis,” the Phoenix Police said in a statement earlier this month.
Lastly, a Phoenix Police Department spokesperson told ABC15 the department is actively hiring more forensic scientists, and has already filled 2 of 10 vacant positions since May.
Arizona's rape kit tracking system includes a patient questionnaire and barcodes compatible with the state's SAK tracking software, Track-Kit. When a sexual assault kit is collected by a SANE, it is immediately entered into Track-Kit and a notification is sent to law enforcement. Law enforcement then has 5 business days to take possession of the sexual assault kit from the medical facility, and 15 business days to submit the kit to an accredited laboratory for analysis. The kits also contain a card that is given to the survivor which has details on their specific kit and instructions for logging into the Survivor Portal of the Track-Kit system.
In 2020, state legislators introduced SB1276, which would have granted survivors of sexual assault various rights and required law enforcement to give them instructions on how to request the results of their kit analysis, but the bill failed to pass. A similar bill—SB1244—also failed this year. SB1244 would have created a rape kit tracking system within the already existing “automated crime victim notification system.”
In 2021, two bills addressing the time management of rape kits also failed. HB2600 sought to extend the timeline by giving medical facilities 48 hours after collecting a kit to notify law enforcement, instead of the current 24-hour mandate. Law enforcement would then have been required to pick up the kit within 15 business days, as opposed to the current 5 days.
HB2849 had similar aspects, requiring medical facilities to notify law enforcement agencies within 48 hours—not 24 hours—of administering a rape kit examination. The bill then gave law enforcement 15 business days to pick up and submit the kits to the crime lab, although they had to assign a criminal complaint number to the kit within 5 days. Additionally, the bill did not mandate the lab to test kits or specify any turnaround time. HB2849 also would have granted survivors the right to receive law enforcement reports on their cases, but no right to know the status of their kits.