Utah SAC Core Capacity Project: Feasibility Study of Statewide County Jail Data System

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.

Utah’s Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) is located in the Utah Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice (CCJJ) and has been established in CCJJ since the inception of the SAC program in the state. The Research and Data section of the CCJJ is the functional area that houses the SAC. Currently, there are three members, a SAC director, research consultant, and data coordinator, who manage the day-to-day operations of the state SAC programs.

The Utah SAC proposes to conduct a project under the following Core Capacity areas: Collecting and analyzing data on criminal justice system processes, and Increasing access to statistical data. Under the 2019 SJS-SAC award, the Utah SAC has undertaken a study to address the feasibility of bringing together local county jail offender management systems into some form of a statewide jail data system. CCJJ has hired an experienced project manager to begin assessing the status of local jail data systems, and determine if these systems and their needs are amendable to a larger system of data sharing and/or integration. The 2020 proposed SJS-SAC project looks to apply similar methods to data housed in each of the county prosecutor offices. The UT SAC will assess the status of the prosecutors’ data systems and how amenable they are to collecting the data demanded by the Legislature and other partner agencies. As a result of the assessment, an actionable plan will be developed on how to secure further funding to develop the systems needed to gather this data together into a common repository.

Funds are also requested to pay for management and program support personnel, who will perform coordination and monitoring activities, including programmatic and fiscal oversight. Tableau Creator licenses will be purchased for each member of the research team that will be involved in the project. Travel funds will be used for the SAC Director to attend SAC-focused conferences or meetings in 2020 and 2021.

(CA/NCF)

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). Utah’s Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) is located in the Utah Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice (CCJJ) and has been established in CCJJ since the inception of the SAC program in the state. The Research and Data section of the CCJJ is the functional area that houses the SAC. Currently, there are three members, a SAC director, research consultant, and data coordinator, who manage the day-to-day operations of the state SAC programs. The Utah SAC proposes to conduct a project under the following Core Capacity areas: Measuring criminal justice system performance and Increasing access to statistical data. The Utah SAC will undertake a study to address the feasibility of bringing together local county jail offender management systems into some form of a statewide jail data system. Currently, all 25 counties with jails operate their own independent offender record management systems, with no means to connect them together or for state agencies, researchers, or policy makers to easily and efficiently access data to track populations and offender outcomes. The Utah SAC and State Administering Agency propose working with the Utah Department of Technology Services (DTS) to hire an experienced consultant to assess the status of all county jail data systems along with the data needs of CCJJ, other statewide agencies (e.g., Department of Corrections, Department of Public Safety, Administrative Office of the Courts), and the counties, and determine if these systems and the needs are amenable to a larger system of data sharing and/or integration. The result of this project will be a plan for moving forward toward a better way of sharing data from county jails to statewide agencies and policy-makers, with various options that could take the form of a fully integrated statewide data system of offenders in county jails or a more efficient means for county jails to communicate important information (e.g., population counts by certain offender categories, admissions and releases, incident data collection, etc.) to CCJJ and other statewide partners. This plan will then be used by CCJJ to inform future applications for grant funding (e.g., NCHIP) and for funding requests to the Legislature. Funds are also being requested for travel to have the SAC Director attend the JRSA Western Regional meeting and the ASUCRP Conference in 2020. (CA/NCF)