Seattle – U.S. Attorney Brian T. Moran announced Tuesday that the Washington State Patrol and the State Attorney General’s Office received four grants totaling nearly $5.3 million to reduce the backlog of untested rape kits and improve the scientific capacity of the state crime labs.
At the Attorney General’s office, $1.5 million is directed at inventorying, testing and tracking unsubmitted rape kits and an additional $1 million was awarded to expand the collection of DNA from offenders.
At the State Patrol, almost $2 million is to increase the capacity of their crime labs. The second grant is aimed at digitizing and storing some 480,000 case records currently archived so they can more easily be accessed for investigation.
The grants were awarded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance and the National Institute of Justice.