Memphis' Cross-Functional Approach to Sexual Assault Kit Backlog

• August 17, 2015
• Project on Munipical Innovation

Spurred by a nationwide backlog of Sexual Assault Kits (SAKs) that gather critical forensic evidence for prosecuting cases, Memphis is one of many cities, including New York, Detroit, Cleveland, Houston, and Jacksonville, reforming its approach to sexual assault response. By marrying a holistic approach to sexual assault response with cross-sector, interdepartmental organization and clever financing, Memphis provides key lessons for public innovators looking for problem-driven, citizen-centric approaches to improving city government.

A Three-Pronged Approach

On January 31^st, 2014, Memphis Mayor A C Wharton, Jr. established the Sexual Assault Kit Cross-Functional Team (CFT) to eliminate Memphis’ testing backlog. The CFT was built on a survivor-centered design based on a broad conception of sexual assault response that goes beyond testing. Aiming for a holistic solution, the CFT took a three-pronged approach that built a broad base of resources for testing, investigating and prosecuting cases, and survivor support.

Their aim was to change their entire approach to sexual assault by building capacity for a broad solution. “There’s a great deal of support for testing these kits,” said Doug McGowen, the Director of the Memphis Mayor’s Innovation Delivery Team, but “other cities are finding that you’ve now transferred your backlog of testing into a backlog of investigation, or a backlog of prosecution. Frankly, there’s no lag capacity to fix that, so we have to marry up testing, investigative, prosecutorial, and victim advocacy support resources to prevent downstream problems.”

Collaborative Finances

The three-pronged strategy required funding gathered from a coalition of donors outside of the primary funding streams because the financial ecosystem for sexual assault response was focused on testing, instead of recognizing the various services required to support survivors of sexual assault and prosecute their cases.

Though funding for testing is available from sources like the State of Tennessee’s Office of Criminal Justice Programs, Memphis City Council, and national philanthropic organizations, it is more difficult to get funding for a comprehensive solution.

Maura Sullivan, Deputy Chief Administrative Officer for the City of Memphis, said, “We’ve been focused on the need to not only test kits but also gather the resources for investigation, prosecution, and victim advocacy and support.”

Some of the funding tapped larger flows from clever partnerships across city agencies, other levels of government, and other city governments: “We’ve reached out to philanthropy, to the general fund, to the city council,” McGovern said. “We also reached out to the federal government fairly early on about grant funds that can support a comprehensive solution.”

After completing their own testing, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office gave the CFT a portion of its grant funding made available to cities facing similar backlogs. But the community provided a broad base of local support.

Other funding came in trickles that quickly swelled into larger streams from individual donations to the newly formed Sexual Assault Resource fund, started in October 2014 by a private, anonymous donor who gave $10,000 to be managed by the Community Foundation of Greater Memphis. “We rely on our partners throughout the community,” Sullivan said. “We are known nationally as a very giving city, with one of the highest rates of giving in the United States. This isn’t from big family funds, but from many small donations.”

The CFT: Change is a Team Sport

Getting from problem to solution isn’t just about financing; it’s about organizing too.

An investigative report issued in June of last year, commissioned by Mayor Wharton to review Memphis’ policies and procedures for sexual assault response and conducted by former U.S. Attorney Veronica Coleman-Davis, found that, though Memphis followed the best practices of the time, like governments across the nation at all levels, there was “a general and collective failure to understand the importance of DNA testing” and to invest in testing capacity as it developed. In other words, there was no one monitoring, developing, or investing in new solutions as the technology improved. Instead, siloed agencies following old routines kept city governments in the past.

Awareness of the broad dimensions of sexual assault guides the CFT’s organizational design. Formed as a collaboration of government agencies—including members from the Mayor’s Office, the District Attorney’s Office, Memphis City Council, the Chief Administrative Office, the Division of Police Services, the Finance Division, and the Legal Division—and non-profit partners, the CFT was built to lift the “self-imposed verticality,” as Sullivan calls it, that inhibits government services.

Organizing change is “a team sport,” said McGowen.“Unfortunately to this point, we’ve had a bunch of specialists running around, doing their own thing. This illustrates how government delivers services vertically, but people live their lives horizontally. If you take someone who was a victim of sexual assault, it takes three different governments and at least five disciplines to deliver seamless support to that individual, none of whom are contractually obligated to perform service in a way that is centered on the victim.”

The cross-functional approach "puts everyone at the table on equal footing—police, prosecutor, advocates, survivors,” Sullivan explained.

The CFT is the organizational technology that unlocks the interagency and multidisciplinary capabilities of the city that make a holistic solution possible, with each organization applying its unique skills and perspectives to eliminate the testing backlog, follow investigative leads, and prevent future backlogs. Supported by a long-term commitment and rigorous engagement with social sector partners and the community, the CFT unifies the dollars, authority, and expertise of otherwise disjointed agencies and independent social sector organizations to improve the city’s response to sexual assault.

Memphis relies on the expertise of partners to provide quality services the city can’t deliver on its own. “The cross-functional approach doesn’t make one office the fallback, or put one office in charge,” Sullivan explained. “It puts everyone at the table on equal footing—police, prosecutor, advocates, survivors.” This builds a cooperative space for organizations across government and the social sector to offer solutions and expertise a city might not get from its own resources.

It’s a cooperative game, and the playbook includes pulling proven systems off the shelf from other governments and allowing partners in the social sector to provide services. Through its community intervention approach, Memphis structures a cooperative space for community healing and policing that leverages social sector networks and community input to provide individual care to survivors. Sullivan says, “It’s the ideas and dollars from the community that make our work better as a city government.”

Victim Advocates and sexual assault experts from the Joyful Heart Foundation—a national organization that works to heal, educate, and empower survivors of sexual assault—bring survivor healing services to the team. Joyful Heart is sustaining the effort through their “Heal the Healer” training, which ensures social workers and government officials working on sexual assault cases stay resilient. Memphis also works with the National Institute of Justice to adapt capabilities from its National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) to build a robust, streamlined evidence tracking system for sexual assault cases.

According to a monthly SAK status report issued by the city in June 2015, the CFT has overseen an overhaul of its standard operating procedures for investigating sexual assault that mandates processing incoming SAKs quickly and in accordance with current best practices, including transparent performance measurement and timely notification to survivors. The Chief Administrative Office and Memphis Police Department convene quarterly conversations with representatives from the community and a system of victim advocate organizations. The City also built a DNA evidence storage room that ensures forensic evidence is properly maintained. And since the CFT was formed, 71 percent of 566 investigations initiated have been closed.

Lasting Change

The Memphis case shows how government can build solutions as a backbone of support among partners, with sustainable funding and the right structure. The CFT was built to improve the City’s response to sexual assault, but the tactics put in place enable solutions to a range of issues.

The CFT models how preventive, holistic solutions could be organized. “This is what good government is all about,” says McGowen, “taking state, county, local, municipal government, nonprofit partners, victim advocates, and social service providers, and making them come together to deliver service that gives you the best possible outcome by understanding what the person who is receiving the service is going through. If you’re talking about improving government, this is how we must come to work together.”

But there remains a fundamental problem. The SAK backlog across the nation was caused by the absence of any dedicated capacity to continually improve in government. McGowen points to the tension between delivering frontline services and investing in better government over time:

“There’s a tension between just in time service delivery and the requirement to get a better product by investing time that seems to be non-productive, but is an absolutely critical investment in your future ability to deliver services at an even higher level. There’s zero tolerance to fund anything but widgets off the assembly line—pothole repair, street patrols, trash pick-up, etc. But it’s short sighted, in my view, to only fund things that are directly delivering services.”

The best way to solve a problem is to prevent it. And Memphis’ approach to the SAK backlog shows that better government isn’t just reactive. Whether the issue is improved sexual assault response, transparent budget practices, or fighting fires, better government means aiming for prevention. Getting there means putting the time, dollars, and capacity into continual improvement.