HB 8 Audit Notification to Law Enforcement Agencies (PDF)
Effective September 1, 2019, Texas Government Code Section 420.047 required the Texas Department of Public Safety to conduct an audit of unanalyzed sexual assault evidence collection kits. The audit required law enforcement agencies to submit to the DPS a list of the agency’s active criminal cases for which a sexual assault evidence collection kit has not been submitted for laboratory analysis. Please see GC 420.003 for the statutory definition of an active criminal case. This audit only included kits collected on or before August 31, 2019. Law enforcement agencies were required to submit their list to the DPS no later than December 15, 2019.
The audit was conducted via the Texas Sexual Assault Evidence Tracking System. The Law Enforcement Audit spreadsheet below was completed with the information required for each evidence kit and then submitted via Track-Kit to complete the audit. Law enforcement agencies were required to certify within Track-Kit if they did not have any kits that met the audit requirement.
If you have questions regarding the audit requirements or need to submit a list of sexual assault evidence collection kit that have not been submitted for laboratory analysis, please contact the DPS Laboratory by email at SAEreporting@dps.texas.gov.
Initial HB 8 Audit Report
2020 Report on the HB 8 Audit of Unanalyzed Sexual Assault Evidence Collection Kits (PDF)
Quarterly HB 8 Audit Report Updates
2024
The report below was developed specifically in response to the Department's SB 1636 (82R) responsibilities. It provided an inventory of untested/unreported sexual assault evidence collection kits held by the local law enforcement agencies at the time of the enactment of SB1636 from the 82nd regular session (09/01/2011). Law enforcement was required to submit a listing of all active sexual assault cases for which evidence had not been submitted to an accredited laboratory. The timeframe for this audit was for all cases where the offense occurred between 09/01/1996 and 08/01/2011. The statute went into effect on 09/01/2011 and law enforcement agencies had until 10/15/2011 to report their inventory of unanalyzed evidence to the department.
While DPS did not have a view into the inventory of untested/unreported sexual assault evidence collection kits held by the cities/counties that were collected outside of the SB1636 timeframe, HB8 from the 86th regular session provided for a mechanism to obtain that data from local agencies. The first report required by HB8 was due by December 15, 2019 (see HB8).