Vice President Biden Touts Funding for Rape Kit Testing
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Pete Souza / The White House(PIKESVILLE, Md.) — Vice President Joe Biden highlighted the Obama administration’s new initiative to reduce the nationwide backlog of rape kit processing while visiting the Maryland State Police Forensic Science Lab on Monday.
The Sexual Assault Kit Initiative would accelerate testing of the estimated 400,000 rape kits that have been backlogged in law enforcement storage rooms and crime labs across the country.
“Testing rape kits should be an absolute priority for the United States of America. It works, it matters, it brings closure; it brings justice,” said Biden.
Biden added that being able to catch up on the backlog and test the rape kits would result in additional crimes being solved.
“Based on statistical analysis, we could probably, just by doing that and matching them to existing DNA database, solve 50 percent of the rapes that are now unsolved,” he said.
The Obama administration has secured $41 million for the rape kit initiative to help state, local, and tribal law enforcement and prosecutors’ offices take action to reduce the backlog of kits.
The Department of Justice is accepting applications for the grant through May 7.
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