Issue link: http://cp.revolio.com/i/30780
In a letter of response to the FBI, Philadelphia police cited the UCR guidelines for “unfounding” rapes and claimed that many women victims had lied. Subsequently, instead of improving their investigations, the police force stopped coding rape allegations as “unfounded,” and in- stead classified many rapes as “non-crimes,” which elimi- nated the requirement for a full investigation and left the cases—and victims—in limbo. Those cases were never re- ported to the UCR. The investigation by the Inquirer ignited a citywide de- mand for change, and the Women’s Law Project part- nered with the Philadelphia police to review thousands of old and ongoing sex-crime cases. Tracy says the reinvesti- gation turned up “681 first-degree felony rapes that had never been investigated, and another 1,700 sex crimes” from the previous five years. When those cases were re- opened for investigation, survivors were finally believed— and rapists who could be identified were held accountable. Philadelphia’s police department has revamped its sex- crimes unit to be more transparent and effective, but the problem of undercounting rapes persists and has been un- covered in other U.S. cities, such as Washington, D.C., New York, Atlanta and San Antonio. Last year, a scandal similar to the one in Philly was uncovered in Baltimore, when crime reporter Justin Fenton of The Baltimore Sun revealed that the city had the highest rate of “unfounded” rapes in the country, allowing the crimes to go unreport- ed to the UCR and giving the appearance of a low-crime city. Police responded to the Sun series by arguing that women in Baltimore lie about rape more than in other cities—a claim that has since been proven untrue. Most recently, the Department of Justice, in a March report, condemned the New Orleans Police Department for sys- tematically misclassifying sexual assaults, resulting in a THE TEST THAT CAN STOP RAPISTS Ten-thousand rape-evidence kits await testing in Detroit. Another 5,000 lie untested in San Antonio and 1,000 in Milwaukee. Until recently, Illinois had a backlog of 4,000, and the backlog in Los Angeles County at one point reached more than 12,000. The testing of rape evidence—hair, semen, skin cells and fabric fibers painstakingly gathered in an hours-long procedure—still lags in many cities around the U.S., thus delaying or denying justice for rape survivors. But the fact that a few cities have been able to overcome the backlogs and stay current shows that the problem is not insoluble: A decade ago, New York City had 16,000 untested rape kits, but after bad publicity and the subsequent passage of new laws, the city tested all the kits and now keeps up to date on new ones, providing test results within two months. From a crime-solving perspective, there’s strong motivation to prevent backlogs. “You never know what kind of evidentiary information you’re going to get when you test a kit,” says Sarah Tofte, director of advocacy and strategic planning at Joyful Heart Foundation and author of a Human Rights Watch report that brought public attention to the situation. “[The rape kit] may completely change your perception of the case.” In Los Angeles, when the police department finally cleared its backlog, they found 521 matches in the national database of known offenders. They also found 41 instances in which the DNA from multiple kits within the backlog matched, uncovering serial rapists. But misplaced funding priorities put rape kits on a back www.msmagazine.com burner, as police departments complain about the high cost— $750 to $1,200—of processing and testing each one. Although federal money for testing became available through grants from the Debbie Smith Act of 2004, the grants don’t hold states accountable for eliminating backlogs. Furthermore, because of a loophole in the Smith law, money that should go toward rape- kit testing may be directed toward processing other DNA evidence. Finally, some of the funding has remained unspent because of a stipulation that it cannot be used to hire needed staff, such as crime-lab personnel. There is hope, however, in new state laws, such as the one Illinois passed in July that requires law enforcement to track and send all DNA evidence for testing to one central crime lab within 10 days of collection. But the law has this caveat: The state has to do all these things if the money is available. However frustrating, the law is a good start. Tofte explains: “It sets out a really interesting model for how states can tackle their backlog.” Dealing with rape-kit backlogs should be a priority if we expect women to report rape. Furthermore, police departments need to demonstrate that they take such evidence seriously by following through on rape-kit testing and investigations. As a rape-treatment provider told Human Rights Watch in 2009, “If we think it’s unconscionable to discourage a rape victim from reporting and getting a rape kit collected, then it’s unconscionable to have a rape-kit backlog.” —AMANDA LITMAN SPRING 2011 | 29