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The kits were from 1984 to 2009. It sounds like cases were being marked closed (usually incorrectly) before the kits were processed and the DNA added to the dat

The kits were from 1984 to 2009. It sounds like cases were being marked closed (usually incorrectly) before the kits were processed and the DNA added to the database. Thus, the kits were tossed into storage. For background, this is Detroit. Wayne County, in which this happened, is demographically more than 40% Black. From the article “86% of our victims in these untested kits are people of color.“ The city government was essentially bankrupt for many years before making it official in 2013. Funding for testing and investigating these kits happened in 2015. The number of convictions since then is almost scary - that’s more than one conviction per week. Press releases here: https://www.waynecounty.com/elected/prosecutor/detroit-rape-kit-project.aspx https://www.waynecounty.com/elected/prosecutor/detroit-rape-...

wavefunction 9y ago
This is a problem that crosses socio-ethnic boundaries as well, unfortunately. Not that I mean to minimize the historic and ongoing mistreatment of minority crime victims... Austin Texas -a predominantly white and affluent city- has a terrible history of mistreatment of rape kits, 850 in this case: http://www.statesman.com/news/local/city-memo-mold-found-containers-about-850-austin-police-rape-kits/qEZ7rV5h3gnrcJPdJtMhjM/ http://www.statesman.com/news/local/city-memo-mold-found-con...
- code_duck 9y ago
  Austin has plenty of poor people, and the white population is somewhat under 50 percent - 47 according to recent estimates. Hispanic population is about 36%. Keep in mind Austin is the core downtown city, and if you’re thinking of affluence and whiteness, you might be thinking of the suburbs. It’s possible that economically disadvantaged nonwhite people maybe disproportionately represented among rape victims, also there exists a possibility that there is economic or racial bias in the processing of rape kits.
  - IWeldMelons 9y ago
    Austin is a mostly suburban city. Just look at the map.
    - code_duck 9y ago
      Thanks, I’m aware of how the city works since i lived in Austin for a couple of years. I feel like the demographic information that’s available out there can give more information then looking at the map. If you’re talking about APD, it’s fairly urban.
    - bfuller 9y ago
      That's kind of how texas works though
  - wavefunction 9y ago
    Austin is more than the "core downtown city." And I am not talking about Round Rock or Cedar Park or Buda which are majority white. The downtown/near-downtown is one of the priciest places in the state of Texas as far as real-estate costs and the attendant costs of a matching lifestyle. It's only out in the middle ring of the suburbs of Far North/East/South Austin that it starts getting affordable. That is, until you get back into the affluence again in the northern bedroom communities of Round Rock, Cedar Park and Georgetown.
  - dmix 9y ago
    > also there exists a possibility that there is economic or racial bias in the processing of rape kits. There were 11,000 untested rape kits over 2 decades. This hardly sounds like a mistake related to some bias. There is obviously a much bigger issue here, it wasn't individual cases being ignored based on some parameters.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      I don't see how you figure. State and local governments can and do fail to provide services to neighborhoods or towns, and often the places they fail to serve tend to be poor and majority-minority. Or they could just systemically fail to pursue rapists if the victim fit certain criteria and easily achieve these numbers (the latter is what's suggested in the interview): > Q: All the things you were talking about, the better tracking system, the new guidelines for when rape kits get tested ... in the National Institute of Justice report on the backlog (by Michigan State University Professor Rebecca Campbell), the big takeaway there was that too often, officers didn't believe victims, and had used disbelief as a way to triage their workload. > A: They just closed cases, even cases where I think they believed the victim ... They closed cases because the women had worked as prostitutes or had mental illness issues or had substance abuse. Didn't believe them, didn't care, and this was one issue that led to the backlog of these kits. > Q: That's something we look for in certain victims — when the victim is a teenage boy of color, or a woman who has been raped, we want them to be perfect. They can't have had a drink or have worked as a prostitute, and if they have, there's a mindset that makes them almost ineligible to be a victim. > A: One of the reasons we have these untested rape kits ... and I can use Detroit as an example, 86% of our victims in these untested kits are people of color. You're not going to find too many blond-haired, blue eyed white women ... Because their kits are treated differently, their cases are solved. That's just the way it is in this country. If you're a person of color, if you're a different economic class, then your case across the board, across the board, not just sexual assault — they're treated differently. And that's just the truth. People may not want to admit it, but I've seen it throughout my career and I know it's true ... It's just true. ... Race is at the center of this in many ways as well, unfortunately, we know that across the criminal justice system. ... > The training aspect is a huge aspect that can turn around this issue. If we cannot treat our sexual assault victims right, especially if justice has been denied to them for so many years, we certainly want to be able to treat our current survivors properly. As you well know, culture change is the hardest kind of change to make.
  - heurist 9y ago
    The wealthiest part of Austin, Westlake, barely 5 minutes from downtown, isn't even officially part of Austin.
    - code_duck 9y ago
      Thanks, your comment illustrates my intent. I erred in saying downtown. What i meant to say is that Austin the city isn’t necessarily what people think of as ‘Austin’. When I think of South Austin and the area east of I35, especially as it was 8-10 years ago, I picture a working class area with low income hispanic people and my young college friends, not anyone affluent.
rhizome 9y ago
Demographically, Detroit is currently over 80% black, perhaps only coincidentally similar to the proportion of untested rape kits. Perhaps. However, Detroit was ~30% white in 1980, 3x what it is today, and untested rape kits surely fed a perception of intractable crime over the intervening years as white flight killed the city.
- Brockenstein 9y ago
  Wayne County != Detroit, Detroit might be 80% black, but Wayne County according to what I've read is 40.5% black.
  - throwitDownNow 9y ago
    Guess What? Those rapes don't proportionally occur in the rest of the county. The vast majority of the rape kits are from Detroit
  - AdjustYourWrld 9y ago
    The problem with your line of reasoning is the rapes don't occur across the county at a proportional rate. The vast majority of those rape kits come from Detroit, you should learn a little history
    - roninb 9y ago
      Why is this being downvoted?
      - toomuchtodo 9y ago
        Unnecessary condescending tone regardless of information delivery attempted if I had to hazard a guess. > The problem with your line of reasoning is the rapes don't occur across the county at a proportional rate. The vast majority of those rape kits come from Detroit @AdjustYourWrld: Educate us! Citations please! We are all here to learn and indulge our curiosity.
analog31 9y ago
I grew up in a suburb of Detroit, in Wayne County. What I recall is that there was practically an ongoing blood feud between Detroit, the county, and the state. Racism may not have been the only factor, but it was a decisive factor. I couldn't make sense of it at the time, being just a kid, but I think it might still be hard to make sense of today. I certainly don't want to make any excuses for what happened, but one question that crosses my mind is: Did Detroit have any money to investigate these crimes, even if they had wanted to?

wavefunction 9y ago

This is a problem that crosses socio-ethnic boundaries as well, unfortunately. Not that I mean to minimize the historic and ongoing mistreatment of minority crime victims... Austin Texas -a predominantly white and affluent city- has a terrible history of mistreatment of rape kits, 850 in this case: http://www.statesman.com/news/local/city-memo-mold-found-containers-about-850-austin-police-rape-kits/qEZ7rV5h3gnrcJPdJtMhjM/ http://www.statesman.com/news/local/city-memo-mold-found-con...

code_duck 9y ago
Austin has plenty of poor people, and the white population is somewhat under 50 percent - 47 according to recent estimates. Hispanic population is about 36%. Keep in mind Austin is the core downtown city, and if you’re thinking of affluence and whiteness, you might be thinking of the suburbs. It’s possible that economically disadvantaged nonwhite people maybe disproportionately represented among rape victims, also there exists a possibility that there is economic or racial bias in the processing of rape kits.
- IWeldMelons 9y ago
  Austin is a mostly suburban city. Just look at the map.
  - code_duck 9y ago
    Thanks, I’m aware of how the city works since i lived in Austin for a couple of years. I feel like the demographic information that’s available out there can give more information then looking at the map. If you’re talking about APD, it’s fairly urban.
  - bfuller 9y ago
    That's kind of how texas works though
- wavefunction 9y ago
  Austin is more than the "core downtown city." And I am not talking about Round Rock or Cedar Park or Buda which are majority white. The downtown/near-downtown is one of the priciest places in the state of Texas as far as real-estate costs and the attendant costs of a matching lifestyle. It's only out in the middle ring of the suburbs of Far North/East/South Austin that it starts getting affordable. That is, until you get back into the affluence again in the northern bedroom communities of Round Rock, Cedar Park and Georgetown.
- dmix 9y ago
  > also there exists a possibility that there is economic or racial bias in the processing of rape kits. There were 11,000 untested rape kits over 2 decades. This hardly sounds like a mistake related to some bias. There is obviously a much bigger issue here, it wasn't individual cases being ignored based on some parameters.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    I don't see how you figure. State and local governments can and do fail to provide services to neighborhoods or towns, and often the places they fail to serve tend to be poor and majority-minority. Or they could just systemically fail to pursue rapists if the victim fit certain criteria and easily achieve these numbers (the latter is what's suggested in the interview): > Q: All the things you were talking about, the better tracking system, the new guidelines for when rape kits get tested ... in the National Institute of Justice report on the backlog (by Michigan State University Professor Rebecca Campbell), the big takeaway there was that too often, officers didn't believe victims, and had used disbelief as a way to triage their workload. > A: They just closed cases, even cases where I think they believed the victim ... They closed cases because the women had worked as prostitutes or had mental illness issues or had substance abuse. Didn't believe them, didn't care, and this was one issue that led to the backlog of these kits. > Q: That's something we look for in certain victims — when the victim is a teenage boy of color, or a woman who has been raped, we want them to be perfect. They can't have had a drink or have worked as a prostitute, and if they have, there's a mindset that makes them almost ineligible to be a victim. > A: One of the reasons we have these untested rape kits ... and I can use Detroit as an example, 86% of our victims in these untested kits are people of color. You're not going to find too many blond-haired, blue eyed white women ... Because their kits are treated differently, their cases are solved. That's just the way it is in this country. If you're a person of color, if you're a different economic class, then your case across the board, across the board, not just sexual assault — they're treated differently. And that's just the truth. People may not want to admit it, but I've seen it throughout my career and I know it's true ... It's just true. ... Race is at the center of this in many ways as well, unfortunately, we know that across the criminal justice system. ... > The training aspect is a huge aspect that can turn around this issue. If we cannot treat our sexual assault victims right, especially if justice has been denied to them for so many years, we certainly want to be able to treat our current survivors properly. As you well know, culture change is the hardest kind of change to make.
- heurist 9y ago
  The wealthiest part of Austin, Westlake, barely 5 minutes from downtown, isn't even officially part of Austin.
  - code_duck 9y ago
    Thanks, your comment illustrates my intent. I erred in saying downtown. What i meant to say is that Austin the city isn’t necessarily what people think of as ‘Austin’. When I think of South Austin and the area east of I35, especially as it was 8-10 years ago, I picture a working class area with low income hispanic people and my young college friends, not anyone affluent.

rhizome 9y ago

Demographically, Detroit is currently over 80% black, perhaps only coincidentally similar to the proportion of untested rape kits. Perhaps. However, Detroit was ~30% white in 1980, 3x what it is today, and untested rape kits surely fed a perception of intractable crime over the intervening years as white flight killed the city.

Brockenstein 9y ago
Wayne County != Detroit, Detroit might be 80% black, but Wayne County according to what I've read is 40.5% black.
- throwitDownNow 9y ago
  Guess What? Those rapes don't proportionally occur in the rest of the county. The vast majority of the rape kits are from Detroit
- AdjustYourWrld 9y ago
  The problem with your line of reasoning is the rapes don't occur across the county at a proportional rate. The vast majority of those rape kits come from Detroit, you should learn a little history
  - roninb 9y ago
    Why is this being downvoted?
    - toomuchtodo 9y ago
      Unnecessary condescending tone regardless of information delivery attempted if I had to hazard a guess. > The problem with your line of reasoning is the rapes don't occur across the county at a proportional rate. The vast majority of those rape kits come from Detroit @AdjustYourWrld: Educate us! Citations please! We are all here to learn and indulge our curiosity.

analog31 9y ago

I grew up in a suburb of Detroit, in Wayne County. What I recall is that there was practically an ongoing blood feud between Detroit, the county, and the state. Racism may not have been the only factor, but it was a decisive factor. I couldn't make sense of it at the time, being just a kid, but I think it might still be hard to make sense of today. I certainly don't want to make any excuses for what happened, but one question that crosses my mind is: Did Detroit have any money to investigate these crimes, even if they had wanted to?