Maryland Statistical Analysis Center 2015 SJS Program

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 Maryland’s Statistical Analysis Center (MSAC) is located within the Maryland Governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention (GOCCP), Maryland’s State Administering Agency (SAA). The MSAC works in conjunction with GOCCP, and is aligned programmatically with the state’s public safety priorities.

Under this award, the MSAC has proposed four projects.

In Project 1, the MSAC proposes to support Maryland House Bill (HB) 954, the state’s first legislation aimed at researching and gathering data on citizen deaths involving a police officer. In recent years, the state noted that there have been several high profile cases of police use of force, resulting in the death of a citizen. The MSAC will be tasked with designing and facilitating the implementation of a state-wide Arrest Related Death data collection system that mirrors an incident-based reporting system.

In Project 2, the MSAC proposes to support the efforts to collect and analyze new data, as a partner in Maryland’s Safe Streets Crime Reduction Initiative. The SAC specifically proposes to coordinate two additional sites (for a total of five) within the Safe Street program. Safe Streets is an offender-based model established to institute collaboration and information sharing across all levels of government to dramatically reduce crime. To date, GOCCP has partnered with eight local jurisdictions that have demonstrated both a need for, and commitment to comprehensive collaboration across their local criminal justice systems.

In Project 3, the MSAC proposes to work with partners at the University of Baltimore, and University of Maryland Baltimore County to design and conduct an evaluation of a sample of Maryland’s Abuser Intervention Programs (AIP’s). AIPs are programs specifically designed as interventions for perpetrators of intimate partner abuse, and each year, the Family Violence Council (FVC) forwards a list of certified Abuser Intervention Programs to the Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) for inclusion in the judges’ bench book. To date, there has been no formal evaluation of the effectiveness of these AIP’s in Maryland and the FVC expressed interest in gathering data on recidivism rates and/or trends of abusers attending, or having attended court ordered AIP’s.

In Project 4, the MSAC proposes to assist in the data collection and analysis phase of Maryland progress toward becoming a Justice Reinvestment Act (JRI) state. The purpose of this Council is to develop a statewide framework of sentencing and corrections policies to further reduce the state’s incarcerated population, reduce spending on corrections, and reinvest in strategies to increase public safety and reduce recidivism.

CA/NCF