President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed legislation aimed at ending the backlog of rape kits nationwide.
Presently, at least 100,000 rape kits are untested in the U.S. and are likely to remain so without adequate funding to test DNA in a timely fashion.
The Debbie Smith Reauthorization Act of 2019, named in honor of a 1989 rape victim whose evidence went untested until 1994, will help fund DNA test training as well as education programs. The law will also fund the Sexual Assault Forensic Exam Grant Program.
“This legislation authorizes the Department of Justice to provide resources to State and local law enforcement to help make sure that criminals are brought to justice. We know that DNA is much more likely than fingerprints to result in the identification of a criminal, yet thousands of rape kits currently sit untested in labs and on police storage shelves across the Nation,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement. – READ MORE