State Justice Statistics Program for Statistical Analysis Centers

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.

The South Carolina Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) operates as part of the Office of Highway Safety and Justice Programs (OHSJP), which functions as the State Administrative Agency (SAA). The SAC has developed and maintains a collaborative relationship with other criminal justice and research agencies including the South Carolina Department of Corrections (DOC), the South Carolina Department of Probation, Parole & Pardon Services (DPPPS), the South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice and the South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division (SLED), and the South Carolina Budget and Control Board's Office of Research and Statistics (ORS). One of the SAA's responsibilities in its oversight role over Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) funding streams has been to monitor the disproportionate representation of minority children in the juvenile justice system and report the results to OJJDP. At one point, South Carolina was found to be out of compliance with OJJDP's disproportionate minority contact (DMC) requirements, a finding which was recently rescinded on the condition that appropriate measures be implemented, including targeted statistical analysis of the problem. To address this issue, the SAC will use funds to complete a more detailed analysis of disproportionality focusing on juvenile school crime using South Carolina Incident Based Reporting System (SCIBRS) data for the years 2010, 2011, and 2012. SCIBRS is an incident based reporting system compatible with FBI NIBRS. Specifically, the SAC will tailor the analysis to include race, age, and ethnicity variables and will use population estimates to calculate arrest and offense rates for each of the comparison groups at state and county levels. The SAC will complete a report detailing its findings and identifying recommendations to ensure compliance with DMC requirements. The SAC will also complete a project to improve access to DPPPS data. DPPPS is responsible for more than 40,000 offenders under its jurisdiction and is responsible for ensuring that appropriate treatment services are provided to those offenders by other agencies. Client-level data of those offenders under community supervision are incomplete and are maintained in disparate information systems, which negatively impacts the ability to evaluate the effectiveness of the state's reentry/treatment services. The SAC proposes to collaborate with DPPPS and ORS to create a dataset which will consist of community supervision offender records and treatment records from provider agencies. ORS has extensive experience linking records from different agencies and DPPPS staff will provide technical assistance in the linking process as well as data analysis after completion of the combined dataset. The SAC will complete three reports to: 1) analyze the timeliness of service delivery for offenders released from prison to DPPPS supervision; 2) a data dictionary detailing the contents of the newly created dataset; and 3) address the data quality of the newly created dataset.
(CA/NCF)