Rather than a “rape kit start up,” which is a really awful phrase to use, why don’t we process all of the backlog rape kits that are sitting in the evidence lockers across the country, first.
Because the startup is basically just a few people who believe in the idea, whereas the backlog of rape kids is a problem distributed over the entire country through the institutional neglect of thousands of people?
If the two people who founded this startup were going to take your advice - how would they do it? Just send a check to crime labs all over the country and hope they process the kit? Start a letter writing campaign?
Doing it as a startup means you’re out of touch, don’t appreciate the scale of the problem and the work involved, and the risk you put survivors in of not being able to get justice.
This is a policy and legal challenge, not a business.
Why can't it be both? The tweets and comments like yours come off as wildly tone deaf to me. The system is failing people /now/ and there are people trying to provide a supplemental solution to that failing. If startups like this are so problematic then the answer should be rendering them irrelevant not demonizing their efforts. Give victims something better instead of fighting to limit competing options. If the diy kits end up failing to demonstrate legal merit then it's not like they'll be especially in-demand anyway.
> The system is failing people /now/ and there are people trying to provide a supplemental solution to that failing.
Frankly, this sounds like typical Silicon Valley attitude applied totally inappropriately.
"Just get a minimum product out, we'll figure out how to make it work later, or pivot to another market."
That's fine if you're releasing the next todo list app. That's not fine if you're providing women rape kits that, for all intents and purposes a rape kit would be used for, are useless. This severely impacts people's lives at their absolute worst moments.
You might give them the benefit of the doubt if there was even a remotely feasible path for this to be useful without a major rework of the justice system in ways that would severely compromise it in several other aspects.
Given the seemingly insurmountable hurdles, it's hard to see this as anything but a way to exploit vulnerable or fearful women to their own detriment. Especially when they'd previously co-opted the MeToo movement for their branding while suggesting women stock up on these "prior to being assaulted".
Founded by Mariska Hargitay of “Law and Order: SVU” fame.