Award Information
Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2022, $77,121)
On April 13, 2022, Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee issued Executive Order 22-25, establishing an executive working group for the Justice Reinvestment Initiative: Reducing Domestic Violence by Improving Justice System Performance. This has launched a statewide initiative to examine, modernize, and reform the state’s response to domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking. Specifically, the Executive Order recognizes that Rhode Island does not have centralized statewide tracking of domestic violence incidences, arrests, diversions, convictions, or sentencing trends. Under this award, the Rhode Island SAC will begin a special-emphasis project of establishing a data interface to include information obtained from the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS), the Office of the Attorney General, the Judiciary, and the Department of Corrections. The first goal is to evaluate the accuracy and completeness of the state’s criminal history records. The second goal is to prepare for a possible linkage of criminal history records with the state’s Executive Office of Health and Human Services’ Data Ecosystem. The overall objective of this project is to have the SAC function as a central hub of Rhode Island’s criminal justice data. The ongoing centralization of data will enhance inter-agency communication and will facilitate evidence-based policymaking.