Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI) Training and Technical Assistance (TTA)

As of 2022, 76 jurisdictions have been funded through SAKI—including 26 statewide sites. Collectively, SAKI sites now cover over 57% of the U.S. population. These jurisdictions receive customized TTA from our experts to effectively execute their SAKI goals and create a holistic community response to sexual assault that supports victim healing, holds offenders accountable, and improves public safety. This program provides the support and resources needed to address unsubmitted SAKs—including support to inventory, test, and track SAKs; improve practices related to investigation, prosecution, and victim engagement; access necessary training to increase effectiveness in addressing the complex issues associated with these cold cases; and implement multidisciplinary policy development and coordination.

SAKI TTA provides the tools and resources that enable jurisdictions to address and reduce the number of unsubmitted SAKs; improve sexual assault investigative and prosecutive processes; and promote survivor healing by encouraging effective trauma-informed, victim-centered practices—including the following:

• Creating and maintaining a sexual assault response team (SART) and multidisciplinary team
• Identifying and implementing impactful investigative steps
• Overcoming challenges related to cold case sexual assault prosecutions
• Encouraging establishment of local SANE programs
• Linking crime laboratory information systems with investigations and prosecutions
• Developing strategies for victim notification, engagement, and support throughout the entire criminal justice process
• Designing multidisciplinary, trauma-informed, and victim-centered training

By encouraging the adoption of data-driven and effective practices, we aim to facilitate the multidisciplinary SART concept—particularly in jurisdictions with a significant number of unsubmitted SAKs.

In support of SAKI, RTI leads a collaborative team of distinguished partners who represent relevant areas of expertise and interest; these partners include law enforcement officials, forensic medical personnel and SANEs, prosecutors, sexual assault response researchers, victim advocacy professionals, crime laboratory analysts, and curriculum development personnel.

Improving Sexual Assault Investigation and Response for Sexual Assault Victims

Our project activities enhance the understanding of sexual violence and trauma for law enforcement officials, forensic medical professionals, and prosecutors; additionally, such activities bolster the capacity of these groups to address sexual assault and respond in meaningful ways to sexual assault victims. Since 2015, grantees inventoried 146,278 sexual assault kits (SAKs) and sent 83,201 SAKs for testing. 

As the metrics in Table 1 show, agencies with SAKI funding are seeing great results from testing their previously unsubmitted SAKs. From the 83,201 SAKs sent for testing, 72,350 have been fully processed—with 30,259 returning DNA profiles. When uploading the DNA profiles to the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), those profiles have returned 13,961 hits supporting 20,448 case investigations—with 1,874 of those being charged. Processing these SAKs has also led to 1,069 convictions.

Our team also partners with law enforcement officials, forensic scientists, and legal stakeholders to collaborate and provide the necessary skills, tools, and knowledge to effectively investigate and prosecute sexual assault crimes. As of 2022, we have conducted more than 90 webinars, produced more than 35 written briefs, and provided nearly 100 TTA events (on-site and virtually), reaching over 2,400 attendees. Additionally, we created the SAKI Toolkit and SAKI Virtual Academy, which are web-based resources designed to create customized curriculum supporting the SAKI holistic approach to sexual assault response reform.

The SAKI Toolkit offers hands-on resources tailored for the community of practitioners working to respond to cold case sexual assault. Toolkit users can explore key categories of sexual assault response reform, browse topics centered around skill development, and save tools to a customizable dashboard known as the briefcase.

The SAKI Virtual Academy, an online learning platform, offers five e-learning curricula covering the key steps to sexual assault response reform. The curricula are broken out into a total of 24 separate e-learning modules to allow learners to complete courses at their own pace. Throughout each course, learners complete knowledge checks and case study challenges to assess their comprehension of the course content.

SAKI TTA routinely educates more than 5,400 national sexual assault response professionals through briefs, SAKI Toolkit, Virtual Academy, and webinars. All SAKI TTA materials are housed on the SAKI TTA website (www.sakitta.org) and are available to all agencies for free.

Ultimately, the SAKI program will continue to make communities safer and improve the nation’s criminal justice system by delivering evidence-based practices and knowledge to those who work to support victims of sexual assault and other violent crimes.