A rape kit backlog starts for several reasons. Lack of resources and tightened budgets—both for law enforcement and crime labs—have caused rape kits to pile up across the country. But there's more to it than that. In the majority of jurisdictions, the decision whether to send a rape kit for testing rests solely within the discretion of the officer assigned to the case. And a detective may not send a rape kit for testing for a variety of reasons, including misconceptions about the usefulness of rape kits in some cases, misperceptions about a survivor's credibility or if the identity of the suspect is already known.

The truth is that when tested, rape kit evidence can identify an unknown assailant, confirm the presence of a known suspect, affirm the survivor's account of the attack and discredit the suspect, connect the suspect to other crime scenes and exonerate innocent suspects. For example, after New York City, which eliminated its backlog, the city’s arrest rate for rape jumped from 40 percent to 70 percent, compared to 24 percent nationally.
To solve this problem we most end the backlog.