DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid)

BJA has awarded almost $43 million via 32 grants to support the National Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI), an effort to strengthen jurisdictions’ capacity to act on evidence resulting from sexual assault kits. Learn more about SAKI and the FY 2018 awards.

When Cuyahoga County, Ohio, embarked on the testing of nearly 7,000 backlogged sexual assault kits (SAKs) in early 2013, metaphors from Greek and Roman mythology abounded in the Cleveland media coverage – 'Herculean task' and 'Pandora's box' chief among them.

Five years on, now that the backlog has been largely cleared, the sense of dread associated with those words has been replaced by one of...

The Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI), an innovative program of the Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) which is helping law enforcement agencies nationwide test rape kits and close cold case sexual assaults and homicides, is one of the critical investigative tools that led authorities to believe Samuel Little may be the worst serial killer in American history, by enabling police across...

In just 4 years, SAKI has already identified more than 200,000 unsubmitted kits across 54 jurisdictions in 35 states

One untested sexual assault kit can have ramifications far beyond the case for which it was originally collected.

Sexual assault offenders are often serial offenders, either committing multiple sexual assaults or other violent crimes. Testing a sexual assault kit where the perpetrator is known could provide...