Building Delaware's Capacity to Use and Benefit from It's Incident Based Reporting System Data

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 Delaware Statistical Analysis Center is a separate state research and analysis agency reporting to the Director of the Criminal Justice Council (CJC), the organization which serves as Delaware’s State Administering Agency. The SAC works in close partnership with the CJC to identify priority criminal justice issues in Delaware which focus on the SAC’s analytic work. The SAC continues to operate under the supervision of a Director with assistance from five full-time research specialists and one part-time contracted specialist.

Under this award, the Delaware Statistical Analysis Center will conduct activities under the following Core Capacity areas: Carrying out research using incident-based crime data that are compatible with NIBRS, and Increasing access to statistical data. The Delaware Statistical Analysis Center will continue to enhance the structure and format of summary and individual-incident level Delaware Incident Based Reporting System (DIBRS) data made available on the SAC website; and develop an ability to share analytic and data products online in interactive formats. The project will be conducted in three phases. Phase I involved expanding the SAC’s ability to create maps based on Delaware’s IBRS data and enhancing the SAC’s catalog of interactive data products, shareable data files, and analytic products. Phase II benefited the state and other entities by helping the SAC make more high quality IBRS-based analytic and data products readily available to a broader audience, supporting Delaware’s criminal justice reform, public safety, and other efforts more effectively. Under the continuation of phase III of this project, the Delaware SAC will: 1) complete a pilot inquiry to review how NIBRS victim-offender relationship data is entered into the reporting system and how the data impacts Delaware’s ability to analyze and track domestic violence incidents; 2)increase automated processes for data preparation through the software “R” to allow more focus on incident level data; 3) produce more analytical products using the IBRS database and supplemental reporting data; 4) produce and share additional interactive maps, charts, and dashboards based on Delaware IBRS; and, 5) use the Open Data Portal to report offenses at a jurisdictional level in order to provide more transparency in criminal justice data.

Through this project, staff will improve the extent with which the SAC can meet the informational needs of Delaware’s audiences, while providing a more robust library of products. This project will benefit the state and other entities by helping the SAC make high quality IBRS-based products readily available to a broader audience, supporting Delaware's criminal justice reform and public safety efforts more efficiently and effectively.

Funds are also being requested for SAC staff to attend the 2020 ASUCRP Conference. Microsoft Licenses for PowerBI and ESRI Arc GIS Pro will be purchased to assist with interactive visuals and geographic mapping on the SAC website.

(CA/NCF)