An opinion on the American justice system
The United States prides itself on being a firm believer in justice, and we can see this in various forms throughout the media—from crime shows and comic books in popular culture, to live news networks and politicians who claim they aim to make sure the U.S. is safe for all citizens. However, this sense of American justice apparently seems to be inapplicable to victims of rape, especially considering the fact that various untested rape kits—kits that collect forensic evidence from rape victims—have been tampered with by police or even destroyed. Now, everyone knows destroying evidence, especially untested evidence, is dangerous and even detrimental to legal cases and investigations that have not been completed. What is even more disturbing is the fact that some of these rape kits date back to the ‘90s.
Experts estimate that there are around 400,000 untested rape kits across the country. Now the question is how many of these untested kits have been destroyed or untested? Around 333 were destroyed in North Carolina from unsolved cases between 1995-2008, 3,000 were untested in Kentucky, 11,000 in Detroit were found to be abandoned in a storage locker in 2009. Several other newspapers have discovered that thousands of kits have never been tested in Visalia, California; St. Cloud, Minnesota; and Green Bay, Wisconsin. Experts estimate that [pullquote align=”left” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]…thousands of kits have never been tested…[/pullquote]
certain kits have gone untested for 15 years. Numerous law enforcement agencies have never counted the number of untested rape kits sitting in their evidence storage. This has led to a term called “rape kit backlog.” This rape kit backlog is when agencies do not have the adequate resources or funds to go through the numerous kits in a short period of time and are stuck trying to process multiple cases at once while waiting eight months for the rape kits’ results to come in.
The problem is due to several law enforcement agencies that have actually been destroying or leaving evidence untested. Some victims will either never receive the justice they deserve or will have to wait years. The terrible reality here, however, is that destroying untested rape kits is legal, meaning that the officers destroying this evidence will face no repercussions at all, despite knowing the repercussions that their tampering may have on the victim. Imagine waiting to hear the results, to be waiting to find out the identity of the individual who hurt your loved one, only to be told that the evidence that could convict and put that person away had just been destroyed or lost. What must that do to a family? To the victim, knowing that the individual who assaulted them is still out there, the emotion, horror and fear they must feel and that some will never receive justice.