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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 8:05 pm
Time: 8:05 pm
Results for criminal forensics
1 results foundAuthor: Peterson, Joseph Title: Sexual Assault Kit Backlog Study Summary: Sexual assault is one of the most serious crimes facing society and, over the past several decades, increasing attention has been paid to the proper collection of physical evidence from victims to document and reconstruct the crime, to identify the assailant, and to aid in the prosecution of the assailant. When victims report such offenses to the police and are examined at hospitals, medical personnel employ sexual assault kits and accompanying protocols to guide the collection of evidence from the victim. Sexual assault kit (SAK) report forms also record important information from the victim about activities prior to, during and after the assault. Given the likely transfer of biological secretions in such crimes, sexual assault kits and DNA evidence have the power to verify the crime and pinpoint the identity of the assailant. The probative value of such scientific evidence, however, depends largely on the circumstances of the particular case, being pivotal in one instance and less important in another. Although law enforcement agencies and hospitals have greatly improved and expanded procedures to gather sexual assault kit evidence, scientific resources and procedures to test such evidence have not kept pace. The National Institute of Justice staff, researchers and investigative journalists have uncovered the fact that backlogged and untested sexual assault kits (SAKs) are a major problem facing forensic crime laboratories and law enforcement agencies throughout the United States. The combined untested SAKs from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (LASD) and Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) reached 10,895 cases in the fall of 2008. As the result of growing public concern, Human Rights Watch undertook a study in Los Angeles to document reasons behind the accumulation of these untested kits and found a number of organizational and resource deficiencies throughout the city and county. They were not crime laboratory backlogs per se but were untested kits held in police property rooms in cold storage, where investigators and prosecutors had not requested that the SAK be tested. In 2009, however, the chief executives of Los Angles city and county law enforcement agencies announced that all backlogged kits would be tested, using outside private DNA testing laboratories. The untested sexual assault kit problem in Los Angeles, coupled with the fact that agencies had decided to test all such kits for the presence of DNA evidence, presented a unique research opportunity. The Sexual Assault Kit Backlog Project at California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA) was funded by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) in 2009 to accomplish four primary objectives: 1) evaluate the results of scientific tests performed by private laboratories on backlogged sexual assault kit (SAK) evidence from the LASD and LAPD crime laboratories, 2) review the sexual assault case processing literature and the role played by evidence and other factors in solving and prosecuting such cases; 3) determine the criminal justice dispositions of a sample of backlogged and non-backlogged cases before and after kit testing; and 4) identify principal case and evidence characteristics that could be used by forensic laboratories to evaluate and prioritize sexual assault evidence submitted to crime laboratories. The accomplishment of such goals would aid all law enforcement agencies and associated crime laboratories about the value of testing backlogged sexual assault kits and to set guidelines for processing such evidence in the future. Details: Los Angeles: California State University - Los Angeles, School of Criminal Justice & Criminalistics, 2012. 133p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed june 28, 2012 at: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/238500.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/238500.pdf Shelf Number: 125377 Keywords: Criminal EvidenceCriminal ForensicsCriminal InvestigationDNA TypingRapeRapistsSexual Assault (U.S.) |