A new budget approved by the Georgia House of Representatives will allocate $25 billion to the state of Georgia to fund education, transportation and public safety with a portion of that budget used to help the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) process stalled sexual assault kits.
Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Terry England, assured that the new budget will address the concerns of the Division of Forensic Services in processing the remaining evidence kits.
“The budget will afford the division four new forensic scientists and two new lab technicians. This will increase the lab’s capacity to process 1,320 kits per year,” England said.
England said in 2016 the GBI received $36,983,400 and the proposed amount for this year is $39,886,419 in total funds. Director of Communications for the Georgia House, Kaleb McMichen, said the Division of Forensic Services will use $600,000 to fund the new scientists.
“While the GBI is working diligently to process those kits, they are also utilizing the services of a third-party lab to aid in processing that evidence. Even so, the kits now in the Bureau of Investigation’s possession will likely take several years to process. As such, the House determined it was necessary to add those additional positions for the GBI to be able to process those kits more expeditiously,”McMichen said.
House Bill 827 (HB 827) was passed on Feb. 23, 2016 to ensure that rape evidence kits that had been shelved in hospitals will be tested. The bill was officially passed as the Senate Bill 304 (SB 304) on March 31, 2016.
As a result of SB 304 being passed, rape evidence kits that had gone untested for years were delivered to the GBI en masse. This influx of evidence kits resulted in a significant backlog. Deputy Director of the Division of Forensic Sciences, George Herrin, said the lack of sufficient working hands in the forensic lab has also stalled the testing process.
“The backlog of kits to be analyzed is growing. The cause of this growth in the backlog is the capacity of the laboratory which is directly tied to the number of trained scientists and technicians,” Herrin said. “As of Feb 20, 2017, there were 4637 sexual assault kits in the laboratory, not counting kits that were submitted to the laboratory prior to 1999 that may need DNA testing.”
In addition to the overflow of kits, testing them is exhaustive. Accuracy is of the utmost importance and the process can’t be rushed.
“This entire process takes about four to six days per set of three to four kits. Each scientist is currently expected to work ten to fifteen cases per month,” said Herrin.
However, the GBI will hold off on hiring new lab workers, until Governor Nathan Deal signs the final version of the budget. The budget will not be implemented until July 1 and will last until June 30 of 2018.
“The funds may be eliminated, reduced, renewed or increased in the FY 2019 budget, but we won’t know that until next year’s legislative session and we have updated data from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation on their work,” McMichen said.
