When the numbers came out earlier this year, they were staggering. The North Carolina Department of Justice found more than 15,000 rape kits across the state are sitting on shelves, untested.
"What happened is that we had rape kits that were down there for 2 years or more waiting to be tested and that is inexcusable," explains Guilford County Sheriff BJ Barnes.
Instead of sending rape kits to the State Crime Lab in Raleigh, Sheriff Barnes says his kits are tested through a private company. He says they pay about $800 per kit and they get results in about a week.
"We get it back so we can arrest the folks that are committing these crimes," Sheriff Barnes says.
At the State Crime Lab it costs about $700 to process a kit, but the turnaround for results can take several months.
Attorney General Josh Stein says he wants to outsource the old kits and reduce the testing time for new kits.
"We need to develop a clear protocol, so every time local law enforcement has a kit that gets reported, they automatically send it to the crime lab," Stein said.
Stein has proposed legislation to test every kit, and the NC House and Senate Oversight Committee endorsed it.
"We can put bar codes on them. We can track a package, so we know when it gets delivered. We should be able to track a kit to know whe it gets tested," Stein said.
On Wednesday, state lawmakers introduced a bill that would create a statewide rape kit tracking system that would give investigators and victims the ability to check the status of their kit.
It's something that's been implemented before - take a look at Idaho.
Reports say Idaho was the first state in the nation to try tracking sexual assault kits online. The state launched the program last year and also gave a timeline for testing. In the program's first year, lab staff in Idaho have been able to log all cases and are on pace to test them all in time.
"What it's going to enable us to do is find out where they are in the process, and hopefully give a signal to the lab that 'hey, you need to look at this case,'" says Sheriff Barnes.
Sheriff Barnes is also in the process of coming up with his own backlog solution. He's trying to bring a regional crime lab to Greensboro that would tackle rape kits, ballistics, DNA and other testing. He says he wants it to go in the top floor of the old County Jail building and is working with neighboring counties and departments to figure out a plan.
He adds, their new "M-Vac" would be an asset to a crime lab, which is essentially a vacuum that picks up traces of DNA.
Across the country there are less than 40 machines in use, and the Guilford County Sheriff's Office is the first public agency in the state to own an M-Vac to help solve crimes.