Kansas bill would require police to submit all sexual assault kits for testing
The Kansas Bureau of Investigation has introduced legislation that would require law enforcement agencies across the state to submit all sexual assault kits tied to police reports for analysis, which has historically been an area of concern.
The legislation, HB 2228, ensures such kits are sent to an accredited forensic laboratory within 30 business days of its collection. The KBI’s director, Kirk Thompson, said testing all kits could help connect cases and identify “serial offenders.”
“This bill helps ensure that valuable sexual assault evidence will not be lost,” Thompson said in a statement.
In 2014, the Kansas Sexual Assault Kit Initiative was created to identify factors that led to an accumulation of 2,220 unsubmitted sexual assault kits. In 2017, Kansas became the first state in the country to complete a statewide inventory of unsubmitted kits with voluntary police cooperation. The KBI identified that the factors that lead to the accumulation were: a lack of training and resources within the criminal justice system, a lack of policies addressing the issue and a lack of societal awareness.
Many of the kits were related to cases that were never prosecuted for a range of reasons, including police believing no crime had been committed, and that the likelihood of arrest was low. Other times, victims did not want to cooperate, the KBI has said.
The initiative’s findings, Thompson said Thursday, taught investigators the “importance of testing sexual assault evidence even if it may not improve the chances of prosecution in that particular case.”
Since then, kits that had piled up in police property rooms have been tested at the KBI Forensic Science Laboratory, the agency said.
Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt said the legislation would assist in preventing the same kind of backlog that the initiative helped eliminate.
Prosecutors, medical personnel and victim advocates, including those at the Kansas Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence, are among those who collaborated on the legislation, the KBI said.
“These reforms to sexual assault evidence collection are much needed and will have long-lasting, positive impacts on Kansas’ response to sexual assault,” said the coalition’s executive director, Joyce Grover.
The bill also aims to expand the time, from five years to 20, that the KBI retains kits in cases when one has been collected but a victim did not report to police. It would allow anonymous victims to come forward later, with evidence still protected, supporters say.
Rep. John Carmichael, a Democrat from Wichita, said that aspect of the bill is important because if investigators are unable to make a DNA match immediately, they may be able to years later if a perpetrator is arrested under other circumstances.
“Then through the national matching program, we can go back and identify matches for DNA if we’ve preserved the evidence,” Carmichael said. “We can hopefully apprehend more of these criminals, not only the ones we already have perhaps in jail, but also those who may be apprehended in the future in connection with other crimes.”
Additionally, the legislation asks that child advocacy centers that employ specially-trained professionals be included as places where sexual assault exams can be conducted.
