COMMUNITY ENGAGED: ONE PROFESSOR’S STORY

One evening, as Bill Wells watched the news, a segment aired about the Houston Police Department’s backlog of unprocessed rape kits. As a professor and researcher within the Sam Houston State University College of Criminal Justice, he was interested and concerned. Wells immediately contacted his connection at HPD, offering his expertise and help.

This simple act eventually led to a mutually beneficial partnership to create a system that would clear the case backlog and prevent it from reoccurring.

“The problem had already been identified. Then you dig deeper, and you analyze the problem, understand all the moving parts, and then you lay out a path forward for responding to that problem based on what you learned,” Wells said. “We talked about all the data we would need to examine. We interviewed every sexual assault investigator, all the crime lab’s people that worked in DNA and a host of different stakeholders.”

Together, they worked to identify a solution to the problem while Wells assisted HPD in writing and securing a grant to fund the project. As a result of their work, HPD implemented systematic reforms, completed the testing of over 6,500 previously unsubmitted rape kits and reviewed the associated criminal cases.

The project was, in fact, so successful that it influenced a national model for solving similar issues in other jurisdictions.H