Mandatory Sexual Assault Kit Testing Policies and Arrest Trends: A Natural Experiment

Abstract

Many US jurisdictions have adopted policies mandating the testing of all sexual assault kits (SAKs) collected by law enforcement. Proponents of these policies argue that mandatory testing will lead to more arrests and convictions. We exploit a natural experiment in which one police department adopted mandatory SAK testing while other agencies in the same metropolitan area did not. Using a difference-in-differences design, we examine whether mandatory testing affected arrest trends for sexual assaults.