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 Idaho Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) is located within the Idaho State Police since its inception in 1978. The ISAC has been tasked to provide statistical, analytical, planning, evaluation, and technical support to state, local, and national criminal justice agencies. Additionally, the ISAC collaborates with the Idaho Criminal Justice Commission (ICJC), the ICJC Research Alliance Subcommittee and other state level research working groups to ensure research projects pursued are relevant to policymakers in Idaho.
Under the 2015 SJS program, the SAC will conduct a core capacity and special emphasis project.
Under the core capacity project, the SAC proposes to use Idaho Incident-Based Reporting System (IIBRS) and court data to study assaults or killings of law enforcement officers and other assaults/homicides involving the assault on an officer. The state repository for Idaho is located within the Idaho State Police. With the SAC being located in the same agency, Idaho is well positioned to analyze incident-based crime data. For years, the SAC has researched IIBRS and court data separately and its effects on law enforcement and criminal justice agencies and efforts of the State. This project specifically builds off of those efforts and expands the capacity of the SAC by combining those efforts to analyze an aspect of IIBRS, 1) law enforcement officers killed or assaulted (LEOKA), they have never explored before, and 2) incorporate court data into the analysis. With the national attention and a lack of understanding surrounding Police-Public interactions in the past few years, the SAC will address the issue from a different perspective. Many studies have focused on the impact of citizens regarding their relationship with police, but few have studied the impact on law enforcement and corresponding court outcome.
Under the special emphasis project, the SAC proposes the second year of a three year continuation project to create the infrastructure necessary for several Idaho state agencies to share data with one another. Over the years, the SAC has worked to develop ways to incorporate data from all components of the criminal justice system into its research projects. The proposed information exchange environment will enable the SAC to conduct research that would allow them to learn how juveniles with court observed mental health and substance abuse disorders fare once released from state custody. This study will analyze the quality of the data shared using the data quality assessment tool developed by the Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology.
Currently, state criminal justice agencies wishing to get information about offenders from other state agencies have to contact the appropriate individual in the other state agency, discover the appropriate identifying information the other agency needs to accurately identify the offender(s), then wait for the responding agency to get any necessary approvals, look up the offender(s) name, create a file, then send the information back to the requester. The new service based data exchange will facilitate the transfer of information between state agencies.
(CA/NCF)
