Nearly one in five sexual assault kits collected in Louisiana between July 2024 and December 2025 never reached a crime lab, according to a new report from the Louisiana Legislative Auditor.
The audit, which analyzed 1,879 reported kits collected during that 18-month window, found that 337 kits remained unsubmitted as of February 2026. While state law mandates that law enforcement agencies send reported kits to a crime lab, it stops short of requiring that every kit be tested.
This legislative ambiguity has created a patchwork system where crime labs often exercise their own discretion, sometimes bypassing testing if police or district attorneys signal the case will not be pursued.
When kits sit in evidence lockers or go untested, the opportunity to identify perpetrators and potentially link them to serial offenses through the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) vanishes. The audit reveals that even when DNA hits occurred, communication gaps between labs and law enforcement meant that follow-up investigations were not always guaranteed.
Beyond the testing backlog, the state’s digital infrastructure is failing to provide transparency. The tracking system currently suffers from incomplete or inaccurate data, leaving many survivors unable to confirm the status or location of their evidence. In more than 25% of cases reviewed, police agencies failed to meet statutory deadlines for picking up kits from medical providers or delivering them to laboratories.
The administrative burden is compounded by a lack of oversight. Because Louisiana law currently provides no explicit penalties for agencies that fail to adhere to tracking and submission deadlines, there is little incentive for systemic improvement. Legislative Auditor Michael Waguespack has suggested that publicizing the compliance records of individual agencies in an annual report could serve as a necessary nudge toward better performance.
“Several labs stated that testing kits involves greater complexity and resources than most other types of DNA testing, and that testing more kits limits how much DNA testing they can perform for other types of crimes, such as homicides, the report stated.”
Forensic service demand has risen sharply as more legislation has been introduced since 2023. The number of kits submitted to labs climbed from 643 in fiscal year 2024 to 1,011 in 2025. However, this increase has strained existing crime lab resources, pitting the necessity of sexual assault investigations against the demands of other violent crime caseloads.
Frank Besson, who oversees the laboratory responsible for approximately half of the state’s testing, has indicated a willingness to adopt the auditor’s recommendations. His office has initiated corrective actions.
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