United Kingdom — Law enforcement in England and Wales use Early Evidence Kits to preserve time-sensitive biological samples when a full forensic examination is delayed or a Survivor needs to eat, drink, or use the bathroom before an examination can be arranged. The College of Policing has established this as standard practice.

Click here to view the standard practice.

In this implementation, law enforcement are involved from the very beginning. Kits are provided by law enforcement, with samples handed back immediately after collection.

Australia — There is a long history of Early Evidence Kit (EEK) usage in Australia. While the main purpose of EEKs in Australia is to collect early forensic specimens that may be lost if not collected soon after the assault, they have also specifically been used to address delays in accessing forensic services, particularly in rural and remote communities. New South Wales (NSW) Health in Australia notes that self-collection kits allow patients to collect forensic biological samples while waiting for an examination or transfer between facilities. This reduces the risk of losing time-sensitive evidence and allows the patient to eat, drink, and use the bathroom with less risk of washing away critical evidence. In New South Wales, if a physician-conducted exam is unavoidably delayed, a Sexual Assault Service on-call counsellor may initiate early evidence collection. If a counsellor is also uncontactable, an emergency department nurse or other trained staff at a designated facility may initiate collection. In this implementation, the collection of the samples does not need to be witnessed, though the attending professional must remain in the immediate vicinity of the collection to provide support and receive the samples once they have been completed.

Click here to learn more about NSW Health.

EEKs can be stored in the short term by Emergency Departments in their refrigerator or cold storage, and can also be stored by a Sexual Assault Service in their cold storage. EEKs are transferred by police, with long-term storage following the same procedure as clinician-collected samples. Western Australia has implemented self-collection for resource extraction workers following sexual assault at remote mining sites. Samples are collected by the Survivor, supported by a site medic, and transported by courier to a laboratory or storage facility in Perth. Early Evidence Kit samples are widely accepted by the Australian legal system, to the extent that court records do not note whether samples were physician or Survivor collected.

Completing a paceKit includes selecting clothing to submit as evidence and collecting three swabs. The first of the swabs is a reference sample of your own DNA, with the following two swabs intended to collect samples related to the incident. Glove changes are included throughout the process, and other safeguards and chain of custody considerations consistent with forensic standards.

Staff who have undergone standardized training at our partner organizations. The attending staff follow their own instruction manual, customized to each facility, and do not provide any direction outside of the kit and staff manuals.

paceKits are completed in a controlled environment with the support a trained staff member. The materials include tamper-evident seals and labelling instructions. Completed kits are never left unattended, and do not leave the facility until they are handed over to law enforcement for storage or testing. A chain of custody form is included in the staff materials.

The paceKit is intended for people who are able to consent and complete the collection themselves. Support staff are available, but if someone cannot swab themselves, they should not attempt to complete a paceKit.

The first few cases which proceed to court with evidence collected using a paceKit are likely to face considerable questioning from the defence. Currently, many Survivors going through the criminal justice system receive little to no preparation or support for the court process. We are working to change this in partnership with local organizations and independent legal support.

Another key component is ensuring that Crown Prosecutors understand the paceKit process and how to speak to evidence collected using the paceKit protocol. Materials to support the local prosecutions service will be shared in communities where paceKit programs are implemented.

paceKits are accessed through partner organizations. Fourwords Solutions is scaling access through partnerships across Canada. Reach out to talk about bringing a paceKit program to your community.

Current and Former Crown Prosecutors have been consulted in varying capacities throughout the development of the paceKit and the surround protocol. Recent Crown feedback is as such:

Evidence that is imperfectly collected is not automatically inadmissible. In the vast majority of cases, a judge will admit the evidence and assess what weight to assign it in the context of all other evidence before the court. The more relevant legal question for self-collected samples is not whether the evidence will be admitted, but how much weight a judge will give it and how effectively the Crown can support that weight.

Continuity of evidence does not require a forensic professional at every step. It requires that each person in the chain can testify to what they received, what they did with it, and to whom they transferred it. A lay witness, including a trained front-line staff member, can fulfill this role. Their function is factual, not expert: they are attesting to what they observed and documented, not offering an opinion.

Where a Survivor in a rural or remote community has no reasonable access to a forensic nurse examiner, the moral and legal grounds for an alternative collection method are readily established. Requiring a Survivor to travel several hours in the immediate aftermath of an assault to access forensic care is itself a documented barrier to justice. Necessity is most clearly argued where no other option exists.

The Canadian justice system has a demonstrated history of adapting evidence collection and court procedure to reduce retraumatization while preserving fairness. Video-recorded police statements and child-friendly courtroom arrangements were once considered incompatible with trial fairness and are now standard practice. Self-collected forensic evidence is consistent with that trajectory.

Of course the uniqueness and/or novelty of this self-collection process is going to invite heavy attack from defence counsel, who will be demanding particulars of every step and seizing on potential flaws at every potential phase.  That is to be expected.  It is not an inherent drawback to the process but a sobering concern about ensuring the validity and reliability of its use in practice.