SAFER Act Requirements: DNA Testing, Deadlines, and Tracking

The SAFER Act requirements set federal deadlines and standards for how rape kits are handled: law enforcement must send a newly collected kit to a crime lab within 30 days, the lab has 120 days to complete testing and upload any qualifying DNA profile to the national CODIS database, and states are pushed to build electronic systems that track every kit from collection through final disposition.¹²³ Compliance is not optional in practice: federal grant money is tied to it.

Submission and Testing Deadlines

Two clocks run on every kit. The first starts at collection: the law enforcement agency has 30 days to submit the kit to a crime laboratory.¹ That 30-day rule addresses the pattern that produced the national backlog in the first place: kits sitting in police storage for months or years before anyone moved them.

The second clock starts when the lab takes possession. The laboratory has 120 days to complete the analysis and upload any qualifying DNA profile to the Combined DNA Index System, the FBI’s national database known as CODIS.¹ States and localities that want to remain eligible for certain federal grants must demonstrate they are meeting or working toward these benchmarks.

Electronic Tracking Systems

Before the SAFER Act, a kit could pass through a hospital, a police evidence room, and a crime lab with no unified record of where it was. The law promotes statewide electronic tracking that follows each kit from collection through every stage of handling, including storage and final disposition.¹

A qualifying system integrates data from the medical facility that collected the kit, the law enforcement agency that takes custody, and the lab that performs the analysis. It logs the date of collection, the date of lab submission, the current physical location, the testing status, and the reason for any delay. Survivors can check on their own kit through a victim portal.

The incentive for states to actually build these systems is money. A state that establishes a qualifying tracking system with survivor access may receive up to a 10% increase in funding through the STOP Violence Against Women Grant Program.¹

Survivor Rights That Travel With the Kit

The Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act of 2016, codified at 18 U.S.C. § 3772, creates a set of federally guaranteed rights. These apply in federal jurisdictions and serve as a model many states have adopted or expanded in their own laws.

Preservation and Destruction Notice

You have the right to have your rape kit or its probative contents preserved, without charge, for the length of the maximum applicable statute of limitations or 20 years, whichever is shorter.³ State-mandated storage periods range from around 5 years to 50 years depending on the jurisdiction.

If the agency holding the kit intends to destroy it, the official with custody must give you written notice at least 60 days before the planned destruction.³ Once you receive that notice, you can request continued preservation, and the kit must then be kept for the full period described above. The National Institute of Justice recommends that even unreported kits be retained for at least the statute of limitations or 20 years.⁴

Information About Results and Status

You have the right to be told the results of your forensic exam, including any DNA profile match in CODIS, toxicology findings, and other evidence gathered.³ Disclosure can be delayed if it would compromise an ongoing criminal investigation. You also have the right to know the status and location of your kit at any time, which is what the electronic tracking requirement is designed to make possible.

A Free Forensic Exam, With or Without a Police Report

Federal law guarantees that you will not be charged for the forensic medical exam itself. Under 18 U.S.C. § 3772, survivors have the right not to be prevented from, or charged for, receiving one.³ Federal regulations implementing the STOP grant program define what “free” means in practice: the state must cover the full out-of-pocket cost, including the exam, any insurance deductible, and any expense the insurer denies. None of it can be billed back to you.⁵

You do not have to file a police report or cooperate with law enforcement to get a free exam. The Violence Against Women Act reauthorization of 2005 required states to develop processes allowing a forensic examination without participating in the criminal justice system. States seeking STOP grant funding are strongly discouraged from billing a survivor’s private insurance, and any amount the insurer refuses to pay must still be covered by the state.⁵

What Happens to the DNA

At the crime lab, forensic analysts separate and identify DNA profiles from the biological evidence in the kit. The goal is to develop a profile of the suspected perpetrator that can be uploaded to CODIS for comparison against profiles from other crime scenes and known offenders nationwide.

A common worry is whether the survivor’s own DNA ends up in a law enforcement database. It does not. Federal rules limit what can go into the National DNA Index System. Only profiles attributed to a putative perpetrator qualify as forensic casework eligible for CODIS upload.⁶ The survivor’s profile is used as an elimination sample so analysts can distinguish the survivor’s genetic material from the perpetrator’s, and it is not stored in CODIS or any national index.

When an upload produces a match against a known offender or links evidence across cases, that hit gets reported back through the system. You have the right to be notified of any such match.

Federal Funding and Enforcement

The primary funding source behind rape kit testing is the Debbie Smith DNA Backlog Grant Program, which the SAFER Act reauthorized. The program provides grants to state and local governments for DNA analysis and CODIS uploads. Congress authorized $151 million per year for fiscal years 2024 through 2029.⁷ The Attorney General administers the grants and oversees compliance.

Between 5% and 7% of distributed grant funds must go toward audits of backlogged sexual assault evidence kits, provided enough qualifying applications are received.⁷ These audits force jurisdictions to count their untested kits and report the numbers, something many had never done before the law required it.

The penalty for noncompliance is direct. Any grant recipient found to have an unresolved audit violation becomes ineligible for funding for two fiscal years following a 12-month correction period.⁷ Losing two years of federal DNA testing money matters to any state crime lab, and that threat is the main enforcement lever. There is no federal mechanism to directly compel a local police department to submit a kit. The system runs on funding conditionality: follow the rules or lose the grants.

The Backlog That Remains

The national backlog of untested rape kits has not been eliminated despite these laws and hundreds of millions in federal funding. Precise numbers are hard to pin down, in part because many jurisdictions still lack comprehensive tracking. Estimates have ranged from around 90,000 to more than 400,000 kits depending on methodology and year. The most commonly cited recent figure, from 2024, identified at least 225,000 untested kits nationwide.

The backlog persists for overlapping reasons: limited lab capacity, policies that discourage testing kits from declined cases, and kits collected from survivors who chose not to file a police report that sat untested because no one classified them as actionable. The SAFER Act’s tracking and audit requirements are designed to make these kits visible to the system. Converting visibility into actual testing still depends on sustained funding and local decisions.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 34 USC 40723 – Sexual Assault Forensic Exam Program Grants
2
U.S. Congress. S.1766 – SAFER Act of 2017 – All Info
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 3772 – Sexual Assault Survivors Rights
4
U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice. National Best Practices for Sexual Assault Kits – A Multidisciplinary Approach
5
eCFR. 28 CFR 90.13 – Forensic Medical Examination Payment Requirement
6
Federal Bureau of Investigation. CODIS and NDIS Fact Sheet
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 34 USC 40701 – The Debbie Smith DNA Backlog Grant Program