Idaho's Core Capacity and Special Emphasis Projects

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 (ISAC) has been located within the Idaho State Police (ISP) since its inception in 1978. ISAC resides within the Planning, Grants and Research Department of Idaho State Police. This placement allows ISAC to serve the local and national charter developed by BJS most effectively. The ISAC's major goal is to provide the systematic collection, analysis, and dissemination of statistics related to crime, illegal drugs, victim services, and the administration of justice to state, local and national criminal justice agencies. The ISAC is offered independence from the ISP, allowing for greater collaboration with other state agencies and the criminal justice community. The ISP is also the state repository for all reported arrests and offenses through the Idaho Incident Based Reporting System (IIBRS). The ISAC has direct access to the IIBRS database and is able to compile reports concerning crime in Idaho from this information.

Under this award, the ISAC will use funds for both a core capacity and special emphasis project. Under the core capacity building area, the SAC will carry out a study to understand the effectiveness of school resource officers (SROs). The main research question will address whether lighter offenses are more likely to be reported to police versus handled within the school itself if a school resource officer is present. The severity of offenses will be assessed to determine if schools handle various cases differently when an SRO is present. The study will review the training SROs receive and determine whether it is effective or improvements should be made. A final report will be written and compared to IIBRS data which provides an overview of crime on school campuses by county. The ISAC will also use funds to add to several interactive maps available on the ISAC website for better integration of data and ease of navigation. Under the special emphasis capacity area, the ISAC will use FY 2014 funds to initiate the infrastructure necessary for several Idaho state agencies to share data with one another. The first year would enable data sharing between the Idaho Department of Juvenile Corrections (IDJC) and Idaho Supreme Court (ISC). Should subsequent year funding be available, the second year would expand to include the additional agencies of the Idaho Department of Labor and the Idaho Department of Corrections. Within the third year, the project would include the Idaho Department of Education and the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. The data exchange effort will initially be used to answer research questions concerning how juveniles with court observed mental health and substance abuse disorders fare once released from state custody. The linking of individuals through various databases would occur within the data exchange and would allow information to be obtained by the ISAC that does not contain any names, but would provide information about those known to have been released. Eventually, the project would enable analysis of whether juveniles with histories of mental illness or substance abuse disorders are able to obtain jobs, or the proportion who end up in prison after matching up individuals between the Department of Labor and Department of Corrections. The project will include an overall write-up and analysis covering the quality of the information shared between agencies to indicate how or if successful linkages were obtained between databases. (CA/NCF)