2017 New York State Justice Statistics 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 NY SAC is located within the Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS), which is housed within the Executive Department under the Executive Branch, headed by the Governor. Under this award, the NY SAC will conduct two core capacity building projects: a Non-Domestic Homicide Report; and a Felony Case Processing Report.

The Non-Domestic Homicide project will analyze non-domestic homicides reported by state and local police using 2010-17 Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR) data, with a focus on firearms. The SHR collects case-level data on: victim-offender relationship; demographics of the victim and offender, such as gender, race/ethnicity and age; the circumstances of the homicide; and the type of weapon used. The study will include the number of reported homicides and type (relationship between victim and offender) in each jurisdiction, and type of weapon used. The report will analyze trends in demographic data with a focus on age and race of victims. The analysis and report will provide counties a means to review and understand incidents of homicide in their jurisdictions and compare with other areas in the state. Policy makers will have an understanding of the populations that are most often the victim of non-homicides and will be able to use the reports for future policy decisions. The final report will be released for public distribution and will include specific findings and trend analysis, from data reported through SHR. DCJS plans to produce the report annually to reflect non-domestic rates and other trends.

The Felony Case Processing project is a 2-year project to explore how to fully leverage available court and sentencing data to examine felony case processing, in partnership with DAs. This includes the analysis of criminal case processing time, charges and plea bargaining practices, case outcomes and rates of imprisonment. The project will develop a reporting process to allow DA's offices to better understand the decision-making within their offices and how their case processing compares to other offices. In-house resources will be used to systemically analyze statewide criminal processing trends using updated data presentation techniques and analysis. The project will produce deliverables over the course of the 2-year period that includes quarterly reports, annual reports, and a final summary report with a PowerPoint presentation on the trends in prosecution. The report will allow local prosecutors to monitor trends, workloads and performance in addition to helping the state monitor jurisdictional trends and prosecutor practices. (CA/NCF)

Note: This project contains a research and/or development component as defined in applicable law.