Tennessee is dealing with a backlog on thousands of sexual assault kits.
“Tennessee is not the only state dealing with this issue,” explained Tennessee Bureau of Investigation spokesman Josh DeVine.
In fact, it’s an issue in many states, but here in Tennessee there is a backlog on sexual assault kits that numbers in the thousands.
“The figure was just about 9,000,” said DeVine. “That is a lot of sex assault kits that require analysis.”
Sex assault kits can link a suspect to a crime through DNA analysis and with the current backlog many have sat untested for years, but that soon could change.
“We went after grant money in September of 2015,” said DeVine. “We announced that the TBI had received about $1 million to process untested sexual assault kits.”