Colorado forensic officials have slashed the turnaround time for sexual assault kit testing, but it still takes analysts more than six months to process and complete a test, a new state audit found.
The 190-day testing lag is well outside the 60-day goal set by the legislature in state law, and it’s more than twice as long as the Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s internal goal of three months.
But the reduced backlog also represents a significant improvement from last June’s lag time of 450 days, officials from the state auditor’s office told lawmakers Wednesday morning. Both auditors and CBI officials said the agency should be able to hit 90 days before the end of the year.
“At this time last year, we were at over 500 days, maybe it was in the 560s,” said Rep. Jenny Willford, a Northglenn Democrat. “So I do want to acknowledge that there has been significant progress made, and there are a lot of audit recommendations to implement still, and I look forward to working with you on that.”
State lawmakers learned of the scale of the issue last year, when a survivor of sexual assault testified during a routine oversight hearing. The backlog was sharply exacerbated by the alleged misconduct of a lab analyst, who’s been accused of manipulating results for more than 1,000 DNA tests.
After the scale of the problem became public last year, the legislature directed more money to the CBI and set a goal to drastically reduce the wait time.
The state has signed contracts worth about $2.8 million to outsource 1,400 cases — at a cost of roughly $2,000 per case. The CBI also expects to have money to farm out another 500 cases. But the agency likely can’t hit the 60-day target set by the legislature without additional resources, the auditor’s office said.
Lance Allen, the CBI’s deputy director for forensic services, told lawmakers that Connecticut has roughly the same number of DNA scientists as Colorado, even though its lab receives about half as many cases as the CBI’s team.
To cut the response time further, he said, the department would have to significanty increase its staffing levels.
“We’ve come a long way in the last year — we really have — and we have a lot longer to go. I personally am interested in understanding with specificity what the resourcing would look like to truly get to and promise 60 days,” said Sen. Mike Weissman, an Aurora Democrat.
But he acknowledged the barriers to hitting that target: “Maybe it’s not achievable in the current fiscal environment.”
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