Police management of sexual assault kits (SAKs) has led to systemic
disorganization resulting in lost and forgotten forensic evidence. In response, advocates
champion 'sexual assault kit tracking platforms' as a pillar of survivor-centered and
trauma-informed approaches to rape kit reform at the state level and to create independent
oversight over forensic processes. In 2017, Idaho became the first state to implement a
statewide tracking platform. The Idaho Sexual Assault Kit Tracking System (IKTS) allows the
public to track kits from distribution to collection, and testing at law enforcement
facilities. The emergence of tracking platforms raises questions about what governance
paradigms, data relations, and discourses these systems enable. I find concerns about
"timeliness" and the temporal life of forensic evidence structured the creation, deployment,
and maintenance of IKTS. I argue timeliness is a data governance paradigm with multiple and
shifting meanings of temporality that comprise various legal, social, and data
relationships. I show how the discourse of tardy, slow, and untimely forensic evidence is a
mechanism to codify consistent statewide forensic practice and centralize legal
decision-making. The legislature's treatment of SAK disorganization as a problem of
unmanaged "temporality" assumes a view of evidence processing as merely and neutrally
unmechanized. On one hand, this treatment obscures how racialized rape myths shape police
decision-making; on the other, IKTS protocols offer some intervention. I argue this should
not be read as signs of a racial justice technofix, but as indications of the limits and
possibilities of a "technolegal" response to violence.
College Sexual Assault: A Call for Trauma-Informed Prevention