Begun Center for Violence Prevention Research and Education Senior Research Associate Rachel Lovell and Research Assistant Joanna Klingenstein, and Liuhong Yang, a PhD student at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School for Applied Social Sciences, recently had an article published titled “Testing Sexual Assault Kits Saves Money and Prevents Future Sexual Assaults.”
The article was featured in Translational Criminology, a publication of the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy at George Mason University.
About the article
Nationwide, hundreds of thousands of sexual assault kits (SAKs), also known as rape kits, have languished for decades, untested, in evidence storage facilities. Untested SAKs represent missed opportunities to identify unknown offenders, confirm the identities of known offenders, connect offenders to previously unsolved crimes, possibly exonerate innocent suspects and populate the federal DNA database. By not testing, victims have been denied justice, and sexual offenders have been allowed the opportunity to continue to harm others.
The Begun Center has been testing SAKs since 2015 and the article describes the results of this work, which is already changing what is known about sexual assault, the offenders who commit it and the efficacy of testing SAKs.
Read the full article through the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy website.