Grant will help get rape kits analyzed

When the Detroit crime lab was shut down in the fall of 2008 after a report found a “shocking level of incompetence” in handling and analyzing evidence, the already underfunded and overworked state police crime labs had to try to pick up the slack on the extra work. Somewhere along the line, however, it was discovered that more than 10,000 rape kits were sitting in storage in Detroit having never been tested or analyzed. Now a grant from a statewide group that fights violence against women will help the state pay for at least the beginning of getting that backlog reduced. The Detroit News reports:

The Michigan Domestic Violence Prevention & Treatment Board is funneling $650,000 to help Michigan State Police process samples of evidence taken from sexual assault victims and compare with the DNA of known offenders. Another $150,000 will go toward either updating old kits or purchasing new ones, executive director Debi Cain said.

“Each of these untested kits represents a sexual assault victim who trusted our system to be there for them,” Cain said. “It’s no easy thing for a victim to go through testing. But it’s devastating for a system you trust to let you down.”

The rape kits contain material taken from victims such as semen or hair that could contain DNA of their attackers.

Unfortunately, this only scratches the surface of what is needed:

The one-time grant will hardly put a dent in the backlog. State Police have estimated if one technician had nothing else to do, it would take him or her 58 years to complete the testing of all the kits.

Capt. Michael Thomas, who oversees Michigan’s seven State Police labs, is grateful for the grant, which he estimates will pay for the processing of 400 kits to be selected at random.

“It costs about $1,000 a kit,” Thomas said. “But tests alone aren’t enough. You have to have fund police to investigate or background the crime and then the prosecutors needed to review and seek.”

Under the $650,000 grant, police and the prosecutor’s office will share in $350,000, he said. The success of the sample will provide an idea of what it will cost to complete all 10,500, he said.

“The Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office will receive $150,000 to do a legal review of the rape cases to determine what work must be done,” Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said. “This money will not be used to process the over 10,000 rape kits that the Detroit Police Department collected. That is an undertaking that would take hundreds of hours, and according to State Police, millions of dollars to complete.”

This is yet another reason why the state’s revenue problem must be solved — and why constant budget cuts are not the solution. This is not some minor issue; nothing less than justice is at stake. And even the most committed anti-big government conservative would have to agree that law enforcement are one of the most basic and legitimate functions of government.

But that takes money. And that money can only come from taxes.