The rape kit backlog is the accumulation of sexual assault evidence collection kits sitting untested in police storage and crime laboratories across the United States. Estimates range from roughly 49,000 to as many as 400,000 untested kits, and the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative’s ten-year report put the figure at about 54,000 as of late 2025, though the real total is almost certainly higher because jurisdictions track and report their evidence inconsistently.1SAKI ten-year report, October 2025
What a Rape Kit Is and Where Kits Get Stuck
A sexual assault evidence collection kit is the set of samples gathered during a medical forensic examination after a reported assault. The exam can take several hours and typically includes body swabs to collect the perpetrator’s DNA, a reference swab from the victim, and other biological samples such as hair or clothing fragments. A single kit may contain anywhere from four to twenty individual samples. Once collected, the kit is supposed to move from the medical facility to law enforcement, and from there to an accredited crime lab for DNA analysis.
The backlog forms at two points in that chain. Many kits are never submitted to a lab at all. They are booked into police evidence storage and left on a shelf, sometimes for decades. Kits that do reach a lab may then sit in a queue for months or years before a forensic scientist processes them.
Definitions of “backlogged” vary. The Joyful Heart Foundation treats a kit as backlogged if it has not been submitted or tested within 30 days. Pennsylvania counts kits untested for over a year. Texas and South Dakota use a 90-day threshold.
Why Kits Go Untested
Several forces drive both halves of the backlog:
- Most jurisdictions historically lacked written policies requiring kit submission and testing. Whether to send a kit to a lab was left to the discretion of individual detectives, and kits from cases deemed low-priority, or ones where the suspect was already identified, were frequently shelved.
- Inadequate training on trauma-informed interviewing and the investigative power of DNA led some officers to close cases early or label survivors as uncooperative.
- Public crime labs face chronic shortages of funding and qualified analysts. Testing a single kit costs between $500 and $1,500 and takes several hours of analyst time, even with modern equipment.
- There is no federal law requiring every kit to be tested, and until recently many states had no such requirement either.
Why Testing Every Kit Matters
For years, many jurisdictions skipped testing in cases where the survivor and the suspect knew each other, on the theory that DNA confirmation was unnecessary when identity wasn’t in dispute. Large-scale testing initiatives have undercut that reasoning.
When Cuyahoga County, Ohio, tested nearly 5,000 backlogged kits, researchers at Case Western Reserve University found that 51 percent of the sexual assaults in their study sample were committed by serial offenders. The county’s task force identified 508 serial rapists through DNA evidence and indicted 796 defendants, with a conviction rate above 90 percent in completed cases.
The national data points the same way. The federal Sexual Assault Kit Initiative has generated more than 20,000 hits in the CODIS DNA database, with over 3,000 linked to serial sex offenders and more than 10,500 to serial violent offenders who committed other crimes. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which invested $38 million in criminal asset forfeiture funds to test backlogged kits in 32 jurisdictions across 20 states, reported that 49 to 51 percent of DNA profiles uploaded to CODIS matched an existing profile.
Research from Cuyahoga County estimated net savings of $38.7 million from preventing future assaults by identified offenders, or about $8,893 per tested kit.
Federal Law and Funding
The federal government has spent more than $1.3 billion since 2011 on programs aimed at clearing the backlog and expanding DNA testing capacity. Three pieces of the federal response matter most.
The Debbie Smith Act
Enacted in 2004 as part of the Justice for All Act, the Debbie Smith DNA Backlog Grant Program was the first federal law aimed specifically at the backlog. It funds public crime labs for DNA analysis and requires states to create backlog reduction plans. The law authorizes up to $151 million per year, though appropriations have varied: $117 million in fiscal year 2015, $130 million in fiscal year 2023. As of 2024, the program had facilitated the processing of more than 645,000 DNA samples and contributed to over 300,000 CODIS matches. It was reauthorized in July 2024 and is funded through fiscal year 2029.
The SAFER Act
The Sexual Assault Forensic Evidence Reporting Act, passed in 2013, amended the Debbie Smith Act to set minimum funding levels for lab capacity and testing, support audits of evidence awaiting analysis at law enforcement agencies, and task the Department of Justice with developing national testing guidelines.
The Sexual Assault Kit Initiative
Launched in 2015 by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, SAKI is the most significant dedicated federal program. Over its first decade, SAKI awarded $419 million to 96 agencies across 44 states. According to the program’s ten-year report, SAKI-funded efforts have inventoried more than 245,000 kits, sent over 101,000 for testing, uploaded nearly 40,000 DNA profiles to CODIS, generated more than 19,000 database hits, initiated over 30,000 investigations, and secured 1,538 convictions. The proposed federal budget for fiscal year 2026 maintains SAKI funding at $51.5 million.
Pending Legislation
The Rape Kit Backlog Progress Act, introduced in 2023, would require state and local grant applicants to report their kit inventory, DNA testing submissions, CODIS uploads, and victim notification protocols to the Attorney General, who would then publish an annual public report. The House Judiciary Committee reported it favorably on a unanimous 26–0 vote, but it had not been enacted as of mid-2026.
What States Have Done
Most of the concrete operational change has happened at the state level. At least 37 states and Washington, D.C., have established or committed to statewide rape kit tracking systems, and 42 jurisdictions, including Puerto Rico, have made formal commitments to implementation. These systems assign each kit a unique barcode and track its physical location electronically from hospital to police to lab, often with a secure portal that lets survivors check status without exposing personal information.
The Joyful Heart Foundation’s End the Backlog initiative measures state progress against six pillars: conducting a statewide inventory, testing backlogged kits, mandating testing of new kits, implementing a tracking system, giving survivors the right to know their kit’s status, and allocating dedicated state funding. As of January 2025, 21 states and Washington, D.C., had achieved all six.
Recent state activity includes:
- Pennsylvania enacted a tracking system law with an anonymous victim portal in October 2024 and began a statewide inventory in 2025.
- New Jersey required its attorney general to build a tracking system by August 1, 2025, and separately established a survivor’s right to know kit status.
- Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs signed a law in May 2025 requiring all police departments to use the Track-Kit system.
- Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed SB25-304 in June 2025, creating a Sexual Assault Forensic Medical Evidence Review Board, shortening the processing goal from 90 days to 60, and requiring police to update survivors on kit status every 90 days.
- Louisiana, Maryland, and South Carolina all launched statewide tracking systems in 2024.
States That Have Cleared or Significantly Reduced Backlogs
Washington cleared a backlog of more than 10,000 kits, testing its final kit in January 2025. That effort generated over 2,100 CODIS hits and helped solve at least 22 sexual assault cases. The state now requires law enforcement to submit kits within 30 days and labs to test them within 45; the Washington State Patrol reported meeting the 45-day standard for 95 percent of kits in 2024. Connecticut has held a zero backlog in both law enforcement and crime labs since 2018 and tested 100 percent of its 542 kits within 30 days in 2022. New Hampshire reduced its backlog from 582 kits in 2019 to a single kit in 2022. Alaska, North Carolina, and West Virginia also announced they had ended their backlogs, according to Joyful Heart Foundation’s 2024 reporting.
States Still Struggling
Colorado reported 1,324 backlogged kits as of May 2025, with an average turnaround of roughly 560 days. A major contributor was misconduct by former CBI forensic scientist Yvonne “Missy” Woods, whose data manipulation over 15 years forced the agency to pull biological sciences staff off casework to review her cases. Woods pleaded guilty in June 2026 to four felonies and faces 8 to 16 years in prison. CBI has since hired additional analysts and outsourced about 1,000 kits to private labs, cutting turnaround times by 58 percent between June 2025 and January 2026.
North Carolina reported the largest crime lab backlog in 2022 data at 9,045 untested kits, though unsubmitted kits in law enforcement custody had dropped 99 percent since 2018. Testing has produced 1,211 CODIS hits and at least 66 arrests. Maryland had the highest number of unsubmitted kits in law enforcement agencies in 2022, at 3,599, and has since launched a Track-Kit system and received over $5 million in federal SAKI grants. Texas saw a 45 percent increase in unsubmitted kits from 2021 to 2022 and reported 1,451 kits untested past the 90-day threshold.
What Could Stall Progress
Clearing the backlog depends on more than lab capacity. The surrounding system is under strain.
Forensic Examiner Shortage
Only about one in five U.S. hospitals has a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner on staff. Membership in the International Association of Forensic Nurses fell from 6,100 in 2020 to 5,600 in 2022. Without trained examiners, survivors face long travel, delayed care, or evidence collected by general emergency staff without forensic training, which can compromise a kit before it ever reaches a lab. Some states have piloted telemedicine models in which experienced SANEs guide local nurses through exams remotely, but regulatory barriers in Illinois, Kentucky, and Maryland restrict or prohibit the approach.
Federal Funding Uncertainty
The Department of Justice’s fiscal year 2026 budget proposal would cut funding for the Office on Violence Against Women from roughly $713 million to $505 million, a reduction of about 30 percent that would affect transitional housing, the sexual assault services program, and rural services. As of April 2026, only $472 million of the $713 million appropriated for fiscal year 2025 had been distributed, leaving more than $200 million in grant funding unallocated. The standard grant application cycle has been disrupted, with only one grant opportunity posted by spring 2026 compared to the dozens typically available by that point. A federal court in Rhode Island blocked new administrative restrictions on Violence Against Women Act grants in August 2025, finding they threatened the ability of state coalitions and service providers to operate.
Statutes of Limitations
Even when a backlogged kit is tested and produces a DNA match, prosecution may not follow. A Houston study found that expired statutes of limitations blocked prosecution in 44 percent of cases generated from backlogged kits. Other common barriers include the inability to locate victims years or decades later and the loss of corroborating evidence. More than 22 states, territories, and the federal government have moved to eliminate civil statutes of limitations for at least some serious sex offenses. Washington state, as part of its backlog clearance, eliminated specific statutes of limitations for both civil and criminal sexual assault cases. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that retroactive extension or repeal of civil statutes of limitations is constitutional.
Where Things Stand
Every state now has at least one element of rape kit reform on the books. Tracking systems are operational or planned in more than 40 states. The “forklift” approach of testing every kit regardless of case status has become the accepted standard in funded jurisdictions. The infrastructure to clear the remaining kits exists. Whether lab capacity, federal funding, and the examiner workforce keep pace with it is the open question.