Rape Kits

[One_Life_To_Give]

Local victims advocate this AM on the radio suggested the following.

Rape kits at $1000 ea to process should only be processed when a Judge decides it's appropriate, and paid for by public funds.

She claims that 85% of these are never used in prosecution as any potential evidence is stipulated to by the defense. Additionally she cited the depth of privacy invasion by the conductance of the full tests. So her preference/idea is to collect the samples but only process them when the court so orders.

This sounds reasonable to me. So am I missing something?

[Captain Hilts]

1. the Boston Globe had a good editorial about them today. nt

[TheWraith]

2. I don't know what this person is talking about, but their proposal is problematic.

Forensic evidence needs to be collected quickly, because otherwise you can't collect it at all. To require a judge to decide on a case by case basis whether each case requires it would be rather like an HMO deciding whether a given injury needed stitches or not.

Furthermore, the evidence collected is usually invaluable to providing enough proof to make an arrest.

[One_Life_To_Give]

5. To be fair

She advocated collecting all of the evidence. But not processing the DNA tests(I think) where the bulk of the cost she implied was in the lab work.

[Warpy]

3. Yes, The cost of the kit includes the exam in the ER

and waiting for a judge to OK the expense adds another barrier to reporting an already under reported crime. Prosecution is low even when the evidence has been collected because the system once again punishes the complainant even if they manage to catch the rapist and tie him to the crime through DNA evidence. It's still a he said/she said even with forensic evidence like vaginal tears and internal bruising. Once a victim has courageously decided to prosecute, that evidence becomes absolutely vital to obtaining a conviction. Unfortunately, a physical exam does violate a rape victim again, but it's necessary if she wants to get the piece of shit off the street.

Much of the cost is in obtaining the evidence, not processing it. In addition, it's often not processed unless a suspect is identified or unless the lab has downtime and is able to do a fishing expedition for DNA matches with known criminals. The latter would be prevented if a court order were needed to process evidence.

I wonder if this bird would suggest that evidence obtained at the scenes of other serious crimes should require a court order to process.

[One_Life_To_Give]

4. Thanks

She was stating that Evidence Collection was cheap and the bulk of the cost was the Lab processing. With the costs being mostly for collection then I don't see what differenc ei t would make. You need to collect the evidence in any case.