BALTIMORE (AP) - Maryland’s attorney general recommended Tuesday that the state create a uniform policy for when sexual assault kits would have to be tested.
It was one of a variety of recommendations included in a report on untested sexual assault evidence kits, based on data collected by the Governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention.
Of 135 agencies, 102 responded to show there were about 3,700 untested kits statewide, the report said.
More than 90 percent of the untested kits were in the custody of 13 of the 102 responding agencies, the report found. Many of them serve the most populated counties or cities in Maryland, including the Montgomery County Police Department, the Baltimore City Police Department and the Howard County Police Department. But the report found the survey results don’t show much about the effectiveness of the testing protocols, because each jurisdiction sets its own policy for retaining untested kits.
For example, the Montgomery County Police Department reported 1,082 untested kits in possession, but their policy is to retain all untested kits indefinitely. Many of the kits would have been destroyed in other jurisdictions that do not have the same retention policy.
The report underscored that no conclusions should be drawn about an agency’s operations based solely on the number of untested kits reported.
Other report recommendations include:
- Creating a fixed period of time for retaining untested kits, including anonymous kits, that is no shorter than prescribed by federal law, which requires kits to be preserved for the statute of limitations or 20 years, whichever is shorter.
- Forming victim notification requirements that investigators let victims know when a kit is sent to the crime laboratory for testing and the results of the test.
- Developing a model policy with uniform standards for all jurisdictions and crime laboratories related to the collection, tracking, storage, testing, destroying and reporting of the kits.
- Forming a statewide Sexual Assault Evidence Kit Oversight Committee.
- Providing funding for testing the current inventory of untested kits and designating funding for uniform standards and time mandates related to collection, tracking, storage, testing and reporting of test results.
“By implementing these recommendations, we can enhance our ability to bring sexual assailants to justice, and we can treat victims of sexual assault fairer and more humanely,” Attorney General Brian Frosh said in a statement.
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