Improving Quality of Statistical Data Processes in Tennessee

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. This project contains a research and/or development component, as defined in applicable law, and complies with Part 200 Uniform Requirements – 2CFR 200.210(a)(14).

The Tennessee Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) located within the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI), was established by Executive Order and mandated by legislation to act as a clearinghouse for statewide criminal justice statistics and to operate the statewide Uniform Crime Reporting Program. The broad goals of the SAC are: 1) act as a central coordination point for federal support, with technical assistance available to help criminal justice agencies in the statistical analysis process; 2) coordinate the flow and exchange of information statistics for all criminal justice agencies in the state; 3) locate, utilize, and coordinate resource personnel to provide expertise to criminal justice agencies on developments in criminal justice statistics and to assist these agencies in the development of public policy; and, 4) continue to design, create, and coordinate the development and management of databases for statistical information for both state and local criminal justice agencies and policymakers to improve the decision making process. The SAC continues to operate under the supervision of a Director with assistance from eight support specialists from TBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Support Center.

Under this award, the Tennessee Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) will conduct activities under the following Core Capacity area: Increasing access to statistical data. The SAC is proposing a 24-month project to: (a) improve the quality and process of maintaining agency user data required for access to report and review statistics on crime and criminal justice at the state and local level in Tennessee; (b) improve the quality of incident data being reported to TIBRS and the ability to identify cybercrime in Tennessee; and, (c) improve the ability of the SAC to ensure the quality of incident location data being reported in relation to secondary locations and latitude/longitude fields in TIBRS. Funding through this opportunity will aid in the on-going success of the SAC to successfully report criminal justice statistics to NIBRS, and provide high quality data analysis and reporting for the state of Tennessee (TN).

Funding is also being requested for SAC staff to attend a BJS approved conference or meeting on research and statistics during year 1 and year 2 of the proposed project.

(CA/NCF)