After a person seeks medical attention following a sexual assault, they are offered an examination to be used as evidence.

Under the enacted legislation, police departments have 14 days to collect the examination results, known as a rape kit. They then have another 14 days to turn it over to a lab for analysis.

The lab then has 90 days to analyze the evidence, "provided that sufficient staffing and resources are available," the legislation reads.

Kathy Hagenian, executive policy director for the Michigan Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence, said the legislation makes the procedural timeframe "crystal clear" for all police agencies.

Because these tests are voluntary and highly invasive, Hagenian said it's all the more important the tests are not neglected by law enforcement.

"When the victim does that and the kit isn't taken to the lab, that's a profound betrayal," she said.

East Lansing Police Captain Jeff Murphy said legislation has little impact on their department, which collects the kits from the health facilities within hours of notification and ships them off to the lab first thing Monday through Friday.

Murphy said rape kits were utilized during the string of sexual assaults that occurred in summer 2013. He said to abandon the kits on a shelf would be neglectful.

"I don't know how that ever happens," Murphy said. "It would be neglectful of us not to process them. The only way we would be able to do that is if we were trying not to solve a crime."

But Wendy Murphy, a lawyer specializing in sexual violence, said rape kits reveal more than most are willing to expose.

The examination also can reveal sexual partners who the victim had intercourse with up to several weeks before the incident, Murphy said. This could make many victims embarrassed to proceed with a court process that would reveal these private details to their parents and many others, she said.

Murphy said the kits also are unhelpful in most college sexual assault prosecutions, because prosecution for most of these sexual assaults cases involves a question of consent, which rape kits do not answer.