Louisiana's system for tracking sexual assault kits meets the letter of state law, but a new audit found that 337 of 1,879 kits collected statewide between July 2024 and December 2025 still had not been submitted as of February 2026. The audit also found that more than a quarter of kits collected during that same period missed law-enforcement pickup timeframes, raising fresh questions about how well the state is keeping promises made to survivors when it built the system.
The findings come from the Legislative Auditor's Office, which concluded that Louisiana's kit tracking system complies with state law but said the law itself could be strengthened to improve the information tracked and displayed for survivors, according to WBRZ. Louisiana created its current tracking system in 2023, joining more than 40 other states with similar programs, the station reports.
Pickup Delays and a Legal Gray Area
The audit found that kits collected from July 2024 through December 2025 missed law-enforcement pickup timeframes in more than a quarter of cases, per the same report. The seed audit findings state that current law does not establish timeframes for when law enforcement must pick up kits.
That account conflicts with language from Louisiana State Police, which says a 2024 law, Act 669, requires investigating agencies to take possession of a kit within 72 hours of its collection at a medical facility. The agency's description of the statewide system notes it provides sexual assault survivors with the ability to anonymously track the location and status of their kit, according to the Louisiana State Police crime lab's tracking unit page. The dossier does not reconcile the two accounts, and this article presents both as reported.
Inaccurate Statuses and No Enforcement Mechanism
Beyond the pickup delays, the audit said the tracking system sometimes displays inaccurate kit locations and statuses and offers only limited status options for users trying to follow a case, the station's report states. Legislative Auditor Mike Waguespack said compliance with statutory kit-tracking requirements and timeframes is challenging because there is no oversight authority and no penalties for noncompliance, a structural gap that leaves the system dependent on voluntary cooperation from the agencies that are supposed to use it.
Waguespack recommended that the Louisiana State Police Crime Lab adjust the system to collect and display more accurate kit locations and statuses, expand automated alerts to notify entities when actions are due, and publish the system's annual tracking report on its website, per the same account. None of those recommendations carry a penalty attached if agencies fail to follow them, underscoring the auditor's point about the absence of oversight authority.
A Pattern That Predates the Current System
The gap between kits collected and kits submitted is not new in Louisiana. A 2023 report from Stateline found that the number of unsubmitted kits held by law enforcement in Louisiana increased between 2018 and 2022, a period when the state's tracking system was still in development. A separate count from End the Backlog found that only 222 of Louisiana's 346 police departments participated in the state's annual sexual-assault-kit inventory in 2022.
More recent tallies from End the Backlog show the broader backlog narrowing even as the new findings surface: the organization reported 765 untested kits across Louisiana's state labs, police agencies, and sheriff's offices in 2024, falling to 442 in 2025. Other states have shown what a fully resolved backlog can look like — Stateline reported that Ohio investigators worked through a backlog of 13,931 kits and found 5,349 hits in a DNA database, ultimately clearing the backlog entirely, while kit processing times elsewhere range from 30 days in Ohio to 120 days in Florida.
For Louisiana survivors relying on the tracking portal to follow their own cases, the audit's conclusion lands as both reassurance and warning: the system works as designed under current law, but current law may not be designed well enough.
