State officials in Ohio are raising concerns that hard-won progress in eliminating backlogged sexual assault evidence could be compromised due to widespread non-compliance by local law enforcement agencies. Despite state mandates designed to monitor the handling of evidence, the vast majority of municipal and county police departments are currently failing to submit required sexual assault kit data to state authorities.
According to official state records from 2025, merely 61 law enforcement agencies across Ohio properly submitted their sexual assault kit figures to the Ohio Attorney General’s Office. In stark contrast, 940 other departments failed to provide any reporting data whatsoever. While some smaller municipal jurisdictions may not have investigated any sexual assault cases during the calendar year, state documentation reveals that multiple major police departments also failed to submit their numbers.
The lack of consistent participation has sparked serious concerns from state leadership, who argue that the absence of transparency prevents officials from knowing whether evidence is once again accumulating unanalyzed in storage lockers. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine emphasized that maintaining comprehensive records is vital to preventing past systemic failures from recurring, noting that data acts as essential sunlight on the issue.
In response to the widespread reporting shortfall, Governor DeWine and Ohio Attorney General Andy Wilson announced the creation of an expert working group tasked with investigating why hundreds of police departments have neglected the reporting process. The panel will examine existing statutes and propose legislative solutions to ensure compliance across the state.
Because both DeWine and Wilson are scheduled to conclude their terms in early January, the administration has placed the initiative on an accelerated timeline. The working group has been instructed to complete its evaluation and deliver concrete policy recommendations by early December, providing lawmakers and incoming officials with an actionable path forward.
Attorney General Wilson highlighted several systemic issues that have contributed to the breakdown in reporting. He noted that the current protocols required for law enforcement agencies to submit their numbers can be unnecessarily cumbersome. Furthermore, under the existing statutory framework, there are no financial or administrative penalties imposed on departments that simply disregard the reporting obligation.
Wilson stepped into Ohio’s top law enforcement role following an unexpected vacancy earlier in the year. Governor DeWine appointed Wilson to serve out the remainder of the term after former Attorney General Dave Yost abruptly resigned from his post to join the Alliance Defending Freedom as its vice president for strategic research and innovation.
Victim advocacy organizations have voiced strong support for the state's renewed focus on tracking sexual assault evidence. The Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence released a statement commending DeWine and Wilson for launching the inquiry, emphasizing that numerous stakeholders—including forensic medical professionals, crisis counselors, and law enforcement officers—have worked tirelessly to improve Ohio's response to sexual violence. The organization reiterated its commitment to collaborating with state leaders to build transparent, survivor-centered reporting mechanisms that protect victim privacy.
The current reporting deficit stands in contrast to the extensive reforms initiated during DeWine’s tenure as attorney general. Beginning in 2011, DeWine launched a statewide campaign utilizing the authority of his office to compel 294 law enforcement departments across 75 counties to surrender neglected evidence. That statewide initiative resulted in the recovery and testing of 13,931 previously abandoned rape kits, some of which had remained unanalyzed on evidence room shelves since as early as 1971.
The historical testing initiative produced substantial law enforcement breakthroughs, yielding approximately 5,000 matches in criminal DNA databases and leading directly to the identification of 300 serial rapists. The effort also prompted sweeping legislative changes, including a statutory mandate requiring police departments to submit newly collected kits to accredited crime laboratories within 30 days of establishing that a sexual assault occurred, as well as the creation of a statewide tracking portal that allows survivors to monitor the progress of their evidence.
DeWine recounted the profound lack of accountability that existed prior to those reforms, explaining that survivors had frequently been denied justice and left entirely uninformed regarding their cases. He noted that state authorities originally had no clear estimate of how many thousands of untested kits were abandoned across Ohio jurisdictions until the comprehensive audit began.
Advocates stress that ensuring every kit is accounted for is critical given the physical and financial resources required to gather sexual assault evidence. Conducting a forensic examination in a hospital emergency room typically takes about four hours to complete and costs approximately $2,500 depending on the medical provider.
Tammy Robertson, a forensic nurse working with the Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence, pointed out that while most police departments promptly transfer evidence to crime laboratories following an examination, ambiguity in the law remains an issue. Robertson noted that certain departments interpret current statutes to mean that if an investigating officer does not formally confirm that a crime took place, the agency is not obligated to submit the kit for laboratory analysis.
Once sexual assault kits are transferred to forensic facilities, such as the state-run crime laboratory operated by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) in London, Ohio, scientists extract and analyze biological material to isolate DNA profiles. These profiles are subsequently uploaded to searchable national and state law enforcement databases, providing investigators with critical leads to solve active cases and prevent future offenses. State leaders maintain that rigorous data reporting is the only way to safeguard this pipeline and ensure that no survivor's evidence is quietly forgotten.
(0)