On Wednesday, July 1 Illinois State Police (ISP) Director Brendan Kelly announced the State has achieved a 33-percent overall reduction in its biology and forensic DNA backlog.
Forensic backlogs are a challenge faced by crime laboratories across the country, explained Kelly. He said the state of Illinois is not exempt.
OLYMPIA — In recent years, Washington, like many other states, has been overwhelmed with a backlog of untested rape kits. The state has invested millions of dollars to reduce the number of untested kits — which reached nearly 10,000 in 2015 — and hopes to eliminate the backlog by December 2021.
A Republican bill aiming to prevent another rape kit backlog that includes provisions on school vouchers and undocumented immigration has cleared the Wisconsin state Assembly. 
For nearly 40 years, the murder of a college student, Helene Pruszynski, stumped Colorado detectives. The cold case languished for so long that all but one of her immediate family members had died.
The bill in question would create a standard procedure for collecting DNA evidence in sexual assault cases in Wisconsin, with the hope being that this could prevent a backlog of sexual assault kits in the future.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) – Attorney General Josh Kaul says testing is finally finished on thousands of unanalyzed sexual assault evidence kits.
LITTLE ROCK (KATV) — Thousands of sexual assault kits still need to be analyzed nationwide according to the latest data released.
WASHINGTON, DC – Today, the House of Representatives passed Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney’s (D-NY) H.R. 777 – Debbie Smith Reauthorization Act of 2019. This bipartisan bill was introduced with Congresswoman Ann Wagner (R-MO) in January.
One hundred and fourteen sexual assault kits have been tested and returned to Nome Police Department through the Alaska Crime Lab Capital Fund Project.
Topeka, Kansas authorities announced Thursday that they are close to completing testing on a backlog of over two thousand rape kits that had gone unprocessed for years, according to the Associated Press.
Our exclusive three-month 5 On Your Side Investigation reveals how Ohio fails sexual assault victims. We uncovered dozens of cases that will never be prosecuted, despite compelling DNA evidence, because of Ohio’s current statute of limitations.
The Cuyahoga County Sexual Assault Kit Task Force will pilot a project that uses a federal grant to do genealogical database searches to identify ‘John Doe’ rapists they have indicted based on DNA profiles found in rape kits.
About 8,000 previously untested rape kits have been processed since late 2014 — resulting in nearly 2,000 DNA matches — as part of an effort to clear a backlog prompted by a lack of funding, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement announced Friday.
Over the next 15 years, nearly 200,000 DNA matches have been made by a national database after samples were submitted because of the Debbie Smith DNA Backlog Grant Program. But now that funding is set to expire, so Smith stood on a podium in Washington on Friday morning and pleaded with Congress to reauthorize the funding before the law expires Sept. 30.ISHI 2020
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