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Detroit Sexual Assault Kit (SAK) Action Research Project (ARP), Final Report

NCJ Number
248680
Date Published
February 2015
Length
551 pages
Annotation
This final report on the Detroit Sexual Assault Kit (SAK) Action Research Project (ARP) addresses the following project goals: to assess the scope of the problem by conducting a complete census of all SAKs in the police property inventory; to identify the underlying factors contributing to so many unsubmitted SAKs; to develop a plan for testing SAKs and to evaluate the efficacy of that plan; and to create a victim notification protocol and evaluate the effectiveness/efficiency of that protocol.
Abstract
This report documents the Detroit Sexual Assault Action-Research Project, in which a multidisciplinary team looked at the issue of a large number of sexual assault kits (SAKs) that had not been sent to a crime lab for DNA-testing. The team identified the underlying factors that contributed to the issue; developed and evaluated a plan for testing the SAKs; and created and evaluated protocols for notifying victims of the results of the testing. The report also offers practitioner-friendly resources, including how to create victim-notification protocols.

Date Published: February 1, 2015