I've seen a lot of people talking about a rape kit backlog to justify this idea that we don't care about women or sexual assault.

And while it is true that sometimes the police have biases and don't always handle rape cases properly, this is the exception, not the rule.

The existence of this backlog has a much more mundane explanation. It also mirrors a backlog for other forms of DNA evidence that has also gone untested over the years.

Most rape kits go untested for completely mundane, non-malicious reasons

  • The defendant claims to have had consensual sex with the plaintiff. At this point matching his DNA is a moot point because he's already admitted to having sex with the plaintiff. So the question turns into, was it consensual?

  • The defendant admits to the crime or takes a plea deal. Again matching his DNA becomes moot because the police have already secured a verdict.

  • The case against the defendant is strong enough that they do not need DNA evidence. Testing a rape kit takes time and money that many police districts do not have. Especially when the case against the defendant is strong enough without that evidence. Sometimes this can backfire but it is a relatively normal occurrence in law enforcement. Including for other crimes besides rape.

  • Related to the above, rape kits commonly exclude the primary suspect and are therefore left untested for "strategic" reasons (which likely results in convictions against people who are otherwise innocent).

  • The plaintiff recants before the rape kit is tested.

  • The police are assholes and don't treat the plaintiff fairly (or they're simply negligent). This has been linked to socioeconomic status and race. And it can happen to anyone for any type of crime; this is not unique to women or to sexual assault cases.

  • There is no defendant to test the evidence against. This is the biggest reason for older kits going untested. Up until very recently, the technology to store DNA in a computer database didn't exist. You had to have a defendent to test the evidence against. And this process often destroyed the evidence making it useless if you tested it against the wrong person.

  • Related to the above, if the police weren't sure enough about a suspect, they may have chosen to not test the rape kit because doing so would destroy the evidence and make it useless in a criminal trial.

You can see some of these reasons outlined here:

"The Rape Kit Backlog and What’s Being Done about It". https://nccriminallaw.sog.unc.edu/rape-kit-backlog-whats-done/

This has led to a controversy (discussed in the above link) around which rape kits deserve to be "counted" in these backlog numbers. The only kits that should be counted come from the last two reason outlined above. But many of these activists groups add totals from the other categories to artificially inflate the numbers that they cite. They also tend to imply that the only reason for this backlog is a police bias against female sexual assault victims. Making their argument circular in nature and completely divorced from reality.

DNA databases only became useful relatively recently

One thing that might surprise a lot of people is the fact that we didn't have useful DNA databases until very recently.

This article from 2018 described such technology, as depicted in TV crime dramas, as a work of "science fiction".

The earliest databases do go back to around 1998 (per Wikipedia) but it was only after the early 2010s that they became useful enough, and cheap enough to use, that regularly storing DNA evidence started making sense.

The reason for this was not due to a lack of trying, but due to a lack of efficient technology to accommodate this (as evidenced by the fact that we "tried" to do this as far back as the 1990s).

The early 2010s is also the same time that the police started digging around and realized that they had a rape kit backlog.

The police themselves are the ones who first came forward and starting asking for grant money to test those kits in order to help solve cold cases and identify serial rapists (see the first link above for details about some of these proposals in the state of North Carolina).

This idea that outside groups discovered mass corruption and coverups inside the police is a wild fantasy with no merit in the real world.

DNA testing backlogs exist for other crimes as well

DNA backlogs don't just exist for rape kits. As the police go through old evidence from cold cases, they're discovering similar backlogs pretty much everywhere.

Samuel Little, a 79 year old serial killer, was recently convicted of up to 93 murders that came to light as a result of testing these backlogs in unsolved murder cases.

The police involved in this case have come out asking other police districts in the area to test DNA from some of their cold cases in an effort to help solve murders that may be attributed to him.

"FBI confirms Samuel Little's confession: He is the worst serial killer in U.S. history". https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fbi-confirms-samuel-little-s-confession-he-worst-serial-killer-n1063381

"From Golden State Killer to Grim Sleeper, DNA helping break serial killer mysteries from 1970s and 1980s". https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-serial-killers-20180429-story.html

"Illinois State Police On Huge DNA Backlog: ‘We Have A Lot To Do’". https://will.illinois.edu/news/story/illinois-state-police-on-huge-dna-backlog-we-have-a-lot-to-do

The fact that we have prioritized DNA testing for rape kits, and not for DNA backlogs in other areas, really proves the opposite point here: we care more about women and sexual assault than we do victims of other crimes.

All of the noise around untested rape kits should be interpreted as another example of philogyny and gynocentrism. This "problem" exists pretty much everywhere in law enforcement, but as a society we've made sure to make noise and tackle areas where women are disproportionately affected first.

Rape cases are given just as much attention as other crimes, have a slightly higher conviction rate, and female jurors are less likely to convict a defendant than male jurors

Just to put one last nail in the coffin here I want to make a point about this. Rape culture (at least against female victims) is largely a myth. As a society we care deeply about women being victimized in any way, especially when it comes to sexual assault. Even women's groups like RAINN have come out and said that the existence of a "rape culture" is overblown and that we actually do a pretty good job helping women and convicting rapists.

In fact by giving the notion of a rape culture too much credit, we are discouraging actual rape victims from coming forward and going to the police. They end up being discouraged not because of an actual rape culture, but because they'll hear this myth that they'll be made fun of and subjected to invasive testing for a rape kit that will go unused.

Which is simply not true and is a harmful belief to spread. A fact that has even been acknowledged by women's groups who are trying to address this problem.

Not to mention that such a narrative is offensive towards men who are unfairly painted as villains here.

If anyone is slow to believe a rape victim or to convinct a rapist, it's actually women, not men. Most men care deeply about women and will do anything in their power to seek justice and prevent these kinds of crimes from happening. Often to the point of organizing mobs and beating up or murdering accused rapists on nothing more than an allegation. Some of whom later come out as having been completely innocent the whole time.

The fact is, most men are not rapists and most men do not encourage or condone rape. These arguments make about as much sense as saying that there's a "murder culture among men" because murders often go unsolved and because there's untested DNA evidence from murder crime scenes.

The world isn't perfect and we can always work to improve it. But blindly exaggerating things and making baseless allegations against men for these problems doesn't help anyone. It's time we started looking at things like this factually and rationally instead of jumping to conclusions and assuming that everything is some kind of conspiracy meant to victimize women.

Open letter by RAINN to the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault. http://rainn.org/images/03-2014/WH-Task-Force-RAINN-Recommendations.pdf

"The Campus Rape Myth". https://www.city-journal.org/html/campus-rape-myth-13061.html

"Myths about rape conviction rates are putting people off going to the police". https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/mar/19/myths-about-rape-conviction-rates

"It's Time to End 'Rape Culture' Hysteria". https://time.com/30545/its-time-to-end-rape-culture-hysteria/