August 20 - Thousands Of Rape Kits Untested In New Mexico: Getting To The Bottom Of The Problem

Nationwide, we're not very good at keeping up with testing of physical evidence collected during sexual assault examinations. According to the activist organization End The Backlog, few state governments and ZERO FEDERAL AGENCIES track the number of kits awaiting testing. Here in New Mexico the problem is particularly bad. The Albuquerque Police Department alone has collected nearly 12-hundred rape kits in the past eight years. Only some 350 of those have been processed. And that's just one of around 150 law enforcement agencies in the state. When you consider that only an estimated three-percent of rapes that occur nationwide are ever referred for prosecution, that leaves a lot of offenders on the street where they can do further harm. KSFR's Kate Powell talked to New Mexico sexual assault expert Connie Monahan to find out why this problem exists and what can be done to fix it.