Oregon Statistical Analysis Center, 2019

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 (SAC) is housed Oregon Criminal Justice Commission (CJC) which became the State Administering Agency (SAA) in 2009. The SAC is requesting funds to support one core capacity project (NIBRS Assessment) and one special emphasis project (Data Collection from Local Jails and Regional Correctional Facilities).

For the Core Capacity project, the SAC will use SJS funds to facilitate the the analyses of Oregon incident-based reporting and NIBRS data, with a particular focus on data related to hate incidents and hate crimes within the state. Entitled “Hate Crimes in Oregon: A Comprehensive Analysis,” the project will correspond with a major statewide effort to refine Oregon’s laws related to hate crimes while also facilitating a significant expansion of the SAC’s access to a previously underused source of criminal justice system data. The analysis will have two major focuses: 1) an assessment of the completeness of IBRS data regarding hate crimes. This includes examining reporting patterns across different law enforcement agencies; assessing the effects of the effort to improve incident-based reporting of hate crimes; performing an analysis as to the completeness of incident-based data from all state reporting systems (arrest, court, corrections); exploring the relationship between victims and offenders of violent hate crimes; and creating interactive dashboards for public and stakeholder use. 2) Tracking hate incidents through the criminal justice system. With the creation of the new data systems by the state, the ORSAC will be able to track hate crimes as cases move through the justice system.

For the special emphasis project, the SAC will use SJS funds to collect data from local jails and regional correctional institutions. This effort will be undertaken both to establish broader connections with a new source of criminal justice system data as well as to investigate an under-studied area of the criminal justice system in Oregon. For example, only nine organizations in Oregon currently submit data to BJS for its Annual Survey of Jails, representing ten Oregon counties. As Oregon moves to a centralized jail data system, submission of this data could be streamlined and the SAC could provide assistance to jails in responding to requests from BJS for participation in its survey. The project has two components: 1) developing a centralized jail data system which will expand and standardize the data system through the collection of data and compiling of submissions into a single database; and 2) data analysis towards the costs and benefits of pretrial programs with recommendations for possible alternatives. Once the larger dataset is generated, the SAC will be able to conduct regional and jurisdictional specific analyses which will provide more practical solutions to the pretrial programs.

(CA/NCF)