And we're taking a deeper look tonight at a new directive from the attorney general's office that's making sweeping changes for survivors of sexual assault by mandating that all rape kits, otherwise known as safe kits released to law enforcement must now be tested.

For years, police departments had the option to forgo testing if they thought the results would have no bearing on the outcome of a criminal case.

Well, now that option won't be on the table.

It means more definitive answers for survivors and the clearing of a backlog that now sits at roughly 1200 untested kits.

In New Jersey, law enforcement possession.

That data is according to the nonprofit group the Joyful Heart Foundation, which tracks these reforms nationwide.

As part of their end of the backlog initiative, with the understanding that every untested kid is a survivor whose body became a crime scene.

Ilse Knecht is the organization's director of policy and advocacy and she joins me now.

Ilse, thanks so much for coming on the show.

Your organization has been pretty instrumental in other states leading reforms on this issue.

I wonder what you make of New Jersey's decision and how New Jersey stacks up compared to the rest of the nation when it comes to our backlog?

Well, thanks for having me.

The Joyful Heart Foundation, we're extremely excited about these new steps in New Jersey.

New Jersey has been behind the curve as far as rape kit reform has gone.

Other states have passed many of our reforms.

You know, at the size of New Jersey, and we're really happy to see that New Jersey is now getting on board.

Do we have a true estimate of what the backlog is nationwide?

I mean, there are some systems in place here in New Jersey to track them, but do they exist in a more uniform way?

Well, now we have most of the states actually have rape kit tracking systems.

And most of the states have done a comprehensive, complete inventory of what their backlog is.

So we have a pretty good idea at this point.

We still have a couple of states that have not done a comprehensive inventory.

And South Carolina included Mississippi.

And in fact, New Jersey has not had a complete inventory yet.

And where does it stand nationally, the backlog number originally?

Oh, yeah.

Originally the backlog was about 400,000 untested kits across the country.

If you can even believe that number.

And now we're down to less than 100,000.

By some of our counts, we might be even under 50,000.

So I'm curious.

One of the rationales, at least here behind not testing the kits, was that, you know, if it made no difference, according to law enforcement departments in the outcome of a criminal case, then the test could quite literally sit on a shelf and not be tested.

Why does it matter to test each and every kit?

Well, what matters is to test each kit connected to a reported crime.

So if the survivor wants to kit tested, that's what matters, because they have done everything that society asks them to do after a sexual assault, including have evidence collected from their body, which has become a crime scene.

And what we also know is that when you test kits, you can link crimes together.

Identifying serial rapists, even in cases of acquaintance rape.

We know that actually rapists are not specialists.

They commit all kinds of crime.

They raped people that they know and they rape people they don't know.

And so we're making sure that all of these kids are tested and into the DNA database helps law enforcement to get connections between these crimes.

And sometimes you'll see a rapist that is a serial rapist who also has engaged in all kinds of other crimes.

You can't get those patterns unless you test the kits and put the DNA into the DNA database.

Yeah.

So it's quite literally connecting the dots there.

One of the other reforms that New Jersey is putting forward that these survivors will need to be notified that the kits are going to be tested.

What amount of transparency and accountability does that lead to just by notifying the survivors?

In terms of I mean, there are a couple of things here.

One is that survivors want and need information about their cases and their kids.

We did research in 2016 that we talked with many survivors across the country and they said, we want to know where our kids are.

That is very instrumental to their healing process and it's detrimental to their well-being if they don't know where their kid is and they don't know if it even if it's been tested.

So more information to survivors is always better.

Ilse Knecht thank you so much for coming on to talk about this.

Appreciate your time.

Thank you for covering the story.