CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The rape kit backlog coming back into focus Tuesday as Sen. Thom Tillis is cosponsoring a bill to continue to direct resources to overwhelmed labs across the country.
Tillis is looking to Congress to reauthorize the Debbie Smith Act, named for a sexual assault survivor, which has helped alleviate backlogs in other parts of the United States.
North Carolina is still working through 11,000 kits with more than 8,900 tested. It's an issue advocacy groups across America are keeping an eye on.
The Debbie Smith Act has provided countless resources for local and state crime labs across the country to aggressively tackle their rape kit backlog.
Policy and Advocacy Director Ilse Necht, who's been in the trenches fighting for sexual assault survivors for more than 20 years. She said the headway made in backlogs across America is because of critical resources funneled to labs through this act. It was last authorized in 2019.
"Every minute that evidence sits in a crime lab somewhere waiting for testing is another minute that a dangerous offender could be on the streets committing crimes," Knecht said.
According to Attorney General Josh Stein's sexual assault kit tracking dashboard, Mecklenburg County has 393 kits tested out of 448 submitted as of the publication of this article.
Knecht said not only would victims feel a sense of justice getting perpetrators off the streets, but these offender samples can be used to ensure evidence from unsolved crimes can be matched against a database of known offenders.
"Some are overwhelmed and underfunded, and that's the sad truth that they need more resources," Knecht explained. "The Debbie Smith Act helps with that."
So far, the Debbie Smith Act has allowed for 860,000 DNA samples to be processed creating 604,000 DNA profiles.
Contact Colin Mayfield at cmayfield@wcnc.com or follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.