Inquirer Editorial: Give victims more time

A directive to county prosecutors in New Jersey by acting Attorney General John Hoffman to hold on to forensic evidence in rape cases for five years makes good sense.

Previously, prosecutors were only required to keep rape kits 90 days, which may not be long enough for some victims to decide to go through the ordeal of prosecution of their attackers. Three months isn't much time for a rape victim to recover from the trauma of an attack and its aftermath, including the invasive medical exam to gather DNA evidence.

Applauded by New Jersey victims' advocates, especially the New Jersey Coalition Against Sexual Assault, which lobbied for the change, Hoffman's directive also gives hope to rape victims in Pennsylvania, which doesn't have a uniform evidence policy.

Retention of rape evidence in Pennsylvania can vary from county to county, and even town to town. Some police jurisdictions keep evidence for as little as 30 days. Philadelphia holds on to it indefinitely.

Such discrepancies add to the larger failure of law enforcement nationally to use all the tools available to combat rapes, less than half of which are ever reported to authorities. Police jurisdictions across the country have stockpiles of untested rape kits.

Federal funds are available to test rape kits, at a cost of between $500 and $1,500 each, but many police jurisdictions are only beginning to tackle their untested evidence.

Clearly, DNA evidence can be an effective investigative tool. In Detroit, where more than 11,000 untested rape kits were found gathering dust in a police warehouse, testing the first 1,600 kits led to genetic matches with 90 serial rapists.

Seventeen states are either working on or have passed laws requiring at least an inventory of untested rape kits to determine the depth of their backlogs. Virginia, where four universities are under federal investigation for allegedly mishandling rape charges, recently enacted a law requiring an inventory.

New Jersey quickly processes rape kits in cases where victims have decided to press charges. Philadelphia processes every kit, including evidence collected from victims reluctant to pursue a case. The results are then fed into a federal database to seek serial rapists and other criminals.

The disparity in what happens to rape evidence from town to town in Pennsylvania is unacceptable. It should be standard procedure everywhere to keep evidence in sexual assault cases for more than a few months. New Jersey has made the wise choice to hold evidence longer. Pennsylvania, too, should establish a uniform standard to guide local police jurisdictions in collecting evidence for future cases.