{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["http://maloney.house.gov//media-center/press-releases/maloney-praises-inclusion-of-41-million-to-cut-dna-rape-kit-backlog-in", "Maloney praises inclusion of $41 million to cut DNA Rape Kit backlog in House Appropriations Bill", "2014-12-10", "2014", "2014-12", "Democrat", "House", "NY", "Carolyn Maloney", "M000087", "maloney.house.gov", null, null, "legacy", "WASHINGTON \u2013 Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY) today praised the members of the House Appropriations Committee for including in the 2015 Omnibus Appropriations bill an additional $41 million to eliminate the national backlog in DNA Rape Kit Analysis. The funding is in addition to $117 million provided through the Debbie Smith Act\u2014legislation Maloney authored and worked to reauthorize earlier this year, which has provided grants to state and local governments for rape kit analysis since 2004.\n\u201cI have fought for more than a decade to eliminate the rape kit backlog, but not a week goes by that we don\u2019t hear of another serial rapist being put behind bars using DNA evidence that should have been tested long ago,\u201d said Maloney. \u201cThis additional funding, in concert with the Debbie Smith Act grants already being provided, will help eliminate the backlog once and for all. No woman should be victimized simply because the DNA evidence needed to take her rapist off the streets was never tested.\u201d\u00a0\nThe enhanced funding was included in the Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations bills, which passed in the House and Senate earlier this year. These bills were not signed into law because Congress opted to pass a continuing resolution instead of regular appropriations bills.\nThe $41 million will be used to establish a competitive grant program to support multi-disciplinary community response teams tasked with a comprehensive approach to sexual assault cases. The goal of the grant program will be to address the growing backlog of sexual assault kits at law enforcement agencies.\nAdditional details on the new grant program: \n The Justice Department, through the National Institute of Justice, will develop a comprehensive model to address the underlying issues that led to the backlogs.\n\tGrant funding may be used to inventory the existing backlog of rape kits, test backlogged kits, develop \"cold case\" units to pursue new investigative leads and to support victims throughout the investigation and prosecution process.\n\tGrants may also be used to develop evidence-tracking systems, train law enforcement on sexual assault investigations, and conduct research on outcomes in sexual assault cases.\n\tThe National Institute of Justice is also required to brief Congress within 45 days of the appropriations bill becoming law to outline the design and evaluation criteria for the program, ideal grant size and the number of jurisdictions where this intervention is needed.\n Background: \nRep. Maloney authored the original \u201cDebbie Smith Act\u201d after rape survivor Debbie Smith testified before the House Government Reform Committee in June 2001 about using DNA evidence to solve rape cases.\u00a0 Debbie was raped near her home in 1989, and for six and a half years she lived in fear that her attacker would return to kill her.\u00a0 Debbie was finally able to live without fear when she learned that her rapist had been identified because of DNA evidence and was already in prison.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\nThe Debbie Smith Act was signed into law in 2004 as part of \u201cThe Justice for All Act\u201d, comprehensive legislation that ensured that DNA evidence could be used to convict the guilty and free the innocent.\u00a0Since then, millions of dollars of federal funding have been appropriated under the Debbie Smith DNA Backlog Grant Program to process the thousands of unprocessed DNA evidence kits - including rape kits - across the country. When signed into law, the Debbie Smith Reauthorization Act of 2008 provided $151 million annually and extended the program through FY 2014.\nIn 2013, language Congresswoman Maloney authored to require that 75 percent of Debbie Smith Act funds be used to process the backlog of untested rape kits, was included in the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act that was signed into law. The language mirrored the Sexual Assault Forensic Reporting Act (SAFER Act, H.R. 354) Maloney cosponsored with Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX). The law also provides grants to conduct audits of unprocessed kits so that the backlog of hundreds of thousands of untested rape kits sitting in labs across the country can be tracked.", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["http://maloney.house.gov//media-center/press-releases/maloney-praises-inclusion-of-41-million-to-cut-dna-rape-kit-backlog-in"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.662611961364746, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}