This year, state legislators determined that the Department of Health would be responsible for reducing the backlog of untested rape kits. So far, department of health officials said that effort has not been successful.
Part of that agreement also stipulated that the Department of Health would ensure that local police departments submitted all of the untested kits.
Pennsylvania Department of Health spokeswoman April Hutcheson said one of the problems with this plan is that the department is unaccustomed to dealing with police departments. And although it was familiar with operating medical labs, it did not have experience in running crime labs.
To help remedy that disconnect, the Department of Health last week entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Pennsylvania State Police to take over certification of the testing labs and the handling of the materials.
“Now that we have come up with the partnership we are hoping this is going to streamline the process,” State Police Spokesman Adam Reed said. “It’s making sure that the labs have the right foundations in place to properly test these assault kits and to properly store and place the data in the data bases it needs to be placed in.”
State police will take over communications with local police to make sure the kits are properly prepared and transferred to the labs.
“The MOU is in effect for a five-year period and certainly we are going to do our best to work together moving forward,” Reed said.
In the past, some kits went untested by local police due to cost of sending them to a lab. At other times they were not processed due to a lack of cooperation on the part of the victim.
Supporters of the law said all kits need to be processed because the information is then submitted to an FBI-managed database, which can help find serial criminals.
The law stipulates that the backlog should have already been eliminated and that going forward all kits should be processed within six months. Neither has happened.
