FY 2018 Oregon Statistical Analysis Center 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 Oregon SAC (ORSAC) is housed in the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission (CJC) which became the State Administering Agency (SAA) in 2009. The ORSAC will use funds to support one core capacity project (Website Expansion for Police Stop and Drug Reclassification Data) and one special emphasis project (Recidivism Measures).

For the website expansion project, the ORSAC will revamp the existing online data dashboards related to Justice Reinvestment as well as expand the online data dashboards to include information gathered and analyze from recently passed House Bills. The new House Bills implemented two major public safety related programs: mandating the collection of data regarding law enforcement stops of motorists and pedestrians, and the reclassification of possession of certain controlled substances. The passing of these bills allows the ORSAC an opportunity to increase access across OR and the US to additional sources and types of public safety and criminal justice system data and analyses. The ORSAC anticipates it will receive approximately 1.4 million traffic and pedestrian stop records annually which will be rolled out and available in three stages beginning with the larger law enforcement agencies in 2018 through the smaller law enforcement agencies in 2020. The ORSAC also anticipates the data for the substantial changes to the classification of drug possession crimes in the state will be available for analysis by December 2018. Possession of certain controlled substances were reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor which will be included in the dashboards created by the ORSAC.

The special emphasis project will assess short, medium, and long-term recidivism rates from inmates released from prison. Building on previous research findings, the ORSAC will examine and compare recidivism rates for drug, property, person, sex, and “other” crimes using the standard 3-year interval, along with 5, 10, and 15 year intervals. In 2015, the definition of recidivism in the state was modified which defined recidivism as an arrest, conviction, or incarceration for a new crime within three years of release from incarceration or imposition of probation. With this new definition of recidivism, the ORSAC will investigate the use of the new definition, with a specific focus on the use of longer follow-up intervals. Specifically, the project will examine recidivism patterns for a wide variety of crimes, ranging from property and drug crimes to violent crime and sex offenses, using the existing 3-year interval but also including 5, 10, and 15 year observation periods. The ORSAC will use the data management and statistical techniques it previously developed for its semi-annual recidivism analyses which includes merging data across multiple criminal justice system data systems to compile the rates of a new arrest, conviction, or incarceration for a new crime within a certain time following the release from prison or imposition of probation. Methodologically, the ORSAC will conduct analyses using survival analysis techniques which provides both measures of how many ex-offenders reoffend along with precise, individual measurements of the time between their entry into the risk period after imposition of probation or release from custody and the re-offense event.

(CA/NCF)