Changing the Criminal Justice System Response to Sexual Assault: An Empirical Study of a Participatory Action Research Project

Abstract

In jurisdictions throughout the United States, thousands of sexual assault kits (SAKs; also known as a “rape kits”) have not been submitted by the police for forensic DNA testing. DNA evidence may be helpful to sexual assault investigations and prosecutions by identifying perpetrators, revealing serial offenders through DNA matches across cases, and exonerating those who have been wrongly accused. This paper describes a longitudinal action research project conducted in Detroit, Michigan after that city discovered approximately 11,000 untested sexual assault kits in a police department storage facility. We conducted a root cause analysis to examine individual, organizational, community, and societal factors that contributed to the development of the rape kit backlog in Detroit. Based on those findings, we implemented and evaluated structural changes to increase staffing, promote kit testing, and retrain police and prosecutors so that cases could be reopened for investigation and prosecution. As we conducted this work, we also studied how this action research project impacted the Detroit criminal justice system. Participating in this project changed stakeholders’ attitudes about the utility of research to address community problems, the usefulness of DNA evidence in sexual assault cases, and the impact of trauma on survivors. The results led to new protocols for SAK testing and police investigations, and new state legislation mandating SAK forensic DNA testing.

Identification, Corroboration, and Charging: Examining the Use of DNA Evidence by Prosecutors in Sexual Assault Cases

“…Indeed, in its first 3 years of operation SAKI has resulted in the upload of more than 15,000 profiles to CODIS and more than 900 charges being filed (SAKI, 2019). Research from these projects has also identified a higher rate of serial sexual offenders than was previously suggested (Campbell et al, 2015b; Lovell et al, 2017, 2018), highlighting the value of testing DNA evidence in sexual assault cases. Mandatory testing laws and training and technical assistance from national and regional grant programs to test SAKs (such as SAKI), combined with technological advances increasing the sensitivity of testing and decreasing time to results, will likely result in an increase in the number of sexual assault cases with DNA evidence available at the prosecution phase.…”

“…Researchers have long been concerned with how sexual assault cases are processed through various stages of the criminal justice system. Much attention has been given to sexual assault victims’ interactions with criminal justice actors at the earliest stages of case processing, specifically the reporting stage and initial police responses (Bachman, 1993; Campbell et al, 2015b; Chon, 2014; Clay-Warner & Burt, 2005; Du Mont et al, 2003; Felson & Paré, 2005; Fisher et al, 2003). The interactions between law enforcement and victims during these initial contacts can have significant implications for future stages of case processing, most notably decisions made by prosecutors.…”

Assessing Triangulation Across Methodologies, Methods, and Stakeholder Groups: The Joys, Woes, and Politics of Interpreting Convergent and Divergent Data

“…As such, we could not include rape survivors whose kits had not been tested as a stakeholder group. We sought other avenues for obtaining survivors’ perspectives in the action research project (see R. Campbell et al, 2015), but we could not include them as a stakeholder group in the triangulation design.…”

“…At that time this project began, law enforcement officials were defending their decisions not to test these rape kits for DNA and did not perceive that there was a problem to be solved. By contrast, practitioners from other disciplines—victim advocacy, nursing/medicine, prosecution, and forensic sciences—were alarmed that so many kits had not been tested, particularly because so many of these victims were Black women and/or poor women (see R. Campbell et al, 2015).…”

“…In this context, it seemed possible, perhaps even likely, that stakeholders might try to sway our investigation into why rape kits were not tested, and thus, triangulating information across stakeholder groups and data collection methods seemed prudent. Elsewhere, we discuss the substantive findings of this component of the action research project (see R. Campbell et al, 2015), but briefly, rape kits were not submitted for DNA testing because Detroit-area organizations simply did not have adequate resources (staffing, time, financial) to test all kits and investigate all reported sexual assault cases.…”