Colorado 2014 SAC Project

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 Colorado Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) is located in the Colorado Department of Public Safety's Division of Criminal Justice, the state planning/administrative agency for criminal justice issues. The SAC conducts a variety of studies including recidivism studies, program evaluation, risk assessment instrument development and validation, and parole studies including parole board decisions, prison and youth corrections population projections, and other policy analyses requested on an ad hoc basis by the Governor's Office and General Assembly. The SAC Director oversees a staff of six professional researchers who conduct a variety of research and policy analysis activities and report findings to the state legislature, the Governor's Office and Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice.

Under this award, the Colorado Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) will conduct activities under the following Core Capacity area: Measuring criminal justice system "performance." The SAC plans to conduct a recidivism study of misdemeanor/felony court cases flagged with domestic violence offenses and compare this cohort to a group charged with similar offenses (assault, harassment, etc.) without a domestic violence flag. In addition, the SAC will assess the completeness of the conviction data in criminal history records on domestic violence offenses using the same domestic violence cohorts from the recidivism study. The SAC will also provide training to research staff on Tableau, a business analytics software package that improves visual data displays and provides an interactive platform for the user. Out-of-state travel expenses are being requested for the SAC Director to attend the 2015 NCJA Conference where JRSA will facilitate a track for the SACs. (CA/NCF)