Senate panel hears bill to codify Alaska sexual‑assault kit timelines and tracking

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The Senate Judiciary Committee on Feb. 3 held a first hearing on Senate Bill 69, a bill that would codify timelines for handling sexual‑assault examination kits and require the state to operate a confidential kit‑tracking system that allows survivors to monitor the status and location of their kits.

Senator Klayman, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, opened the meeting and called presenters James Cockrell, commissioner of the Alaska Department of Public Safety, and David Canaris, chief of the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory, to describe the bill’s provisions and the department’s existing practices.

The measure would require health‑care providers to notify the appropriate law enforcement agency that a collected sexual‑assault examination kit is available within 14 days, reduce the time for law enforcement agencies to transfer kits to an accredited laboratory to 20 days, and require the receiving laboratory to complete testing within 120 days of receipt. The bill also would require the Department of Public Safety to develop and operate a confidential kit‑tracking system that allows a survivor to access status information via a barcode and opt in to automated notifications, and it would exempt the tracking data from public records requests, while allowing the department to use the information for reporting on untested kits.

"If you look back at where we've come from testing sexual‑assault kits from say the 02/2010 time period to now, I mean, we were in the dark ages," Commissioner Cockrell said, urging support for the statutory timelines. "We still suffer the highest per capita, the highest rate of sexual assaults in the nation. And certainly holding people accountable for their heinous actions is very important and an important part of that is the examination of sexual‑assault kits."

Chief Canaris provided a sectional analysis during the hearing, describing specific statutory changes. He said the bill would add a victims’ right to be notified of the location and testing date of a collected kit, expand existing timelines to include medical providers, and require that kits be entered into a statewide tracking system established by the Department of Public Safety.

Committee members asked whether the bill would preserve a victim’s ability to have an anonymous exam and still prevent testing unless the survivor later consents. Senator Tobin expressed concern about language using "shall" for transmission of evidence and asked whether that would undermine anonymous‑kit protections. "That is correct that the kit shall be sent to us, but it will not be tested unless the victim acknowledges that through volunteering their information with that kit," an administration witness said, explaining that anonymous kits would be delivered to the state crime lab but kept untested until the survivor chooses to identify the kit.

Committee members sought details about evidence custody and long‑term storage. Canaris said the crime lab currently stores sexual‑assault kits in a temperature‑controlled facility on high‑density shelving and retains those kits "in perpetuity," noting advantages for chain‑of‑custody and the possibility of reanalysis if technology advances. The department said it currently houses about 14,000 sexual‑assault kits.

Senators also asked about rural implementation and security of the web‑based tracking system. The department reported that, in recent data from the deployed system, the average time for medical providers to notify law enforcement was eight days, which is within the bill’s proposed 14‑day requirement, and that they did not observe a meaningful difference between rural and urban providers in the aggregate data. On security, witnesses said the tracking system does not contain personally identifying information; survivors receive a barcode that links to kit status, and the system includes a "safe button" that lets a user quickly hide the page.

The department told the committee that it deployed the tracking system in June 2023 after receiving a federal grant that expires in September 2025; the bill would codify the tracking system and its confidentiality protections to ensure continuity beyond grant funding and administrative changes.

Committee members asked how prosecutions interact with kit testing timelines. The department said charging practices vary: prosecutors may proceed before testing if other evidence exists, but when a kit is the only evidence, charges often await forensic results.

No formal vote was taken. At the end of the hearing the committee announced it would hold Senate Bill 69 for further review. The committee’s next scheduled meeting is Feb. 5, when it will hold a first hearing on Senate Bill 12, regarding permanent fund dividends and child support.

Sources for this article are the Feb. 3 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing transcript and presentations by the Alaska Department of Public Safety.