Award Information
Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2010, $73,766)
The State Justice Statistics (SJS) Program is designed to maintain and enhance each state's capacity to address criminal justice issues through collection and analysis of data. The SJS Program provides support to each state to coordinate and conduct statistical activities within the state, conduct research to estimate impacts of legislative and policy changes, and serve as a liaison in assisting BJS to gather data from respondent agencies within their states.
Under this award, the Tennessee Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) intends to:
1) Expand the amount and format of data available on the Tennessee Crime On-Line Website to law enforcement, other TIBRS contributors, SAC staff, and the public.
2) Improve the accessibility of Tennessee Criminal History Records (TCHR) for research purposes. Currently, the Tennessee SAC has limited capability to conduct analysis, review offense patterns, or look at recidivism using data in the TCHR. To alleviate the manual process of researching criminal history data, TBI intends to contract with a vendor to perform the following tasks: 1) develop the capability of dumping batch-run results of inquiries from TCHR into an MS Sequel or MS Access database for easier recidivism analysis by the Tennessee Board of Probation and Parole; 2) create queries and reports to generate information by offense group; and 3) identify offenders with multiple arrests for the same offense using their entire criminal history. Information obtained from the TCHR will be used to produce a report on repeat DUI offenders.
3) Implement a web-based statewide Deaths and Custody program and provide data to BJS. Applicable incidents will be identified through reports to the TIBRS program for justifiable homicides with the offender killed by law enforcement officers; review of state news articles; and, polling of medical examiners across the state. Once a potential occurrence has been identified, the SAC will contact the law enforcement or correction's department and request information be provided through the web-based system.
Funds will also be used to pay for travel expenses to the annual JRSA Conference.
CA/NCF