A serious backlog within the processing of rape kits has precipitated a minimal quantity of instances to be tried over the past a number of years.

The state of Mississippi doesn’t at present have an ordinary process for dealing with sexual assault proof kits. These kits are additionally known as “rape kits.”

Two items of laws within the Home may streamline that course of and convey the state’s code on sexual assault within the 21^st century, based on lawmakers.

The state legislation nonetheless defines rape as an “assault with intent to forcibly ravish any feminine of earlier chaste character.”  That is thought-about a dated definition which may hinder an investigation or prosecution of a rape case.

“Each HB485 and HB995 must be a precedence for the Mississippi Senate. Collectively, these payments will pave a path to justice and therapeutic for survivors of sexual assault and convey archaic rape legal guidelines into the 21^st century,” says Ilse Knecht, Director of Coverage and Advocacy on the Joyful Coronary heart Basis. “If each payments are handed, these two payments would improve public security, create new paths to justice for survivors of sexual assault, and provides up to date instruments to legislation enforcement and prosecutors to handle sexual violence. The Mississippi Senate ought to act swiftly to move these very important payments.”

Analysis offered by Joyful Coronary heart, an advocacy group based by actress Mariska Hargitay from Regulation and Order SVU, says that rapists are sometimes serial offenders whose crimes are usually not solely associated to sexual assault. They are going to typically go on to burglarize houses and even homicide.

HB 485 would mandate that rape kits had been processed in a well timed method and provides survivors the fitting to know the standing of their kits inside the submission course of to legislation enforcement.

HB 995 would replace the state’s sexual assault code offering extra instruments to prosecutors.

The brand new time-frame would require a medical facility to inform legislation enforcement of a examination being executed inside 4 hours.

“Mississippi has a backlog, however it’s not on the crime lab,” described Sandy Middleton, Heart for Violence Prevention Director. “Usually, the kits are both sitting in a hospital emergency room fridge, or they’re sitting within the trunk of a legislation enforcement investigator, or, , there’s someplace the place they’re not being examined.”

Middleton added that solely 20 rapes had been prosecuted within the state of Mississippi between 2019 and 2021. She stated some legislation enforcement at an area hospital had reported that that they had 50 rape kits of their fridge that had not been processed, some as outdated as a 12 months and a half.

These backlogged instances don’t simply embrace adults; minor kits are usually not being processed both.

The invoice has handed within the Senate Judiciary A committee, and can head to the ground of the Senate for a vote of the total physique.