assault cases by over half since last summer, but it is still well above both the Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s internal goal and the shorter timeline targeted in state statute.

An audit released Wednesday found that CBI’s turnaround time on those sexual assault case kits went from 450 days last June to 190 days this January. CBI officials said they are on track to hit a 90-day timeline in September of this year.

“CBI still has very long turnaround times for all types of testing, including for sexual assault kits,” auditor Hudson Marsh told lawmakers on Wednesday. “But overall we found that it is following a reasonable plan to address them and has made significant progress.”

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The DNA evidence preserved in these kits are often crucial for survivors to receive answers about their assault and seek justice.

Lawmakers honed in on the long turnaround times and backlog last year, passing legislation that gave more money to the agency and set expectations to reduce the wait time, with an aspiration of two months. It was also amplified by the revelation that former CBI scientist Yvonne “Missy” Woods allegedly manipulated results of about 1,000 tests. Woods is facing over 100 felony charges related to that alleged misconduct.

Marsh said the incident made CBI worried about its national accreditation and access to the national DNA database.

“To demonstrate that it was containing the issue, for months CBI diverted almost all of its scientists from working on active cases to instead reviewing the 11,000 cases that had been worked on by the veteran DNA scientist,” he said, referring to Woods.

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CBI has been able to reduce the wait times by outsourcing hundreds of kits to be tested at private labs, but that practice costs the state about $2,000 per case.

The sex assault kit backlog was at its peak of 1,462 in February 2025. By December, it dropped to 629. Three more scientists also began working on DNA testing.

It would take a significant increase in staffing to hit a 60-day turnaround time, said Lance Allen, CBI’s deputy director for forensic services. Connecticut, for example, meets that goal with the same number of scientists as Colorado but half the number of cases.

“To get to that point, you have to be staffed so those elements of life don’t interrupt immediate processing of evidence,” Allen said. “Someone who has to go testify during a long trial has a huge impact. A major homicide that takes a scientist off of case work for a month has a big impact.”

Still, lawmakers want to tackle the issue further.

“We’ve come a long way in the last year, and we have a lot longer to go,” said Senator Mike Weissman, an Aurora Democrat. “I personally am interested in understanding with specificity what the resourcing would look like to truly get to and promise 60 days.”

Auditors recommended that CBI continues to closely monitor its backlogs and turnaround times and keeps the Legislature up to date on the issue. They also recommended that as the agency works to increase its testing capacity and staff, it ensures it has enough staff for management and training.