Improving and Using NIBRS 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 Washington State SAC is located in the Health and Human Services Section of the Washington State Office of Financial Management’s (OFM) Forecasting and Research Division. This designation was made by Gov. Booth Gardner in May 1989 through Executive Order 89-03. OFM, as the state’s central management agency and as the governor’s budget, research, and policy office, is uniquely positioned to facilitate, implement and coordinate an integrated approach to research and forecasting for justice-related programs in the state.

The Washington SAC has successfully conducted and distributed numerous research, forecast, and statistical summaries of key criminal justice indicators investigating the causes of change in the criminal justice system. The SAC also serves as an information clearinghouse for criminal justice research and statistics by collecting state and federal documents and reports, representing data from such entities as the Administrative Office for the Courts, the Department of Corrections, the Caseload Forecast Council, the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs (WASPC) and the OFM.

Under the FY 20 SJS program, the Washington (WA) SAC will conduct two (2) Core Capacity building projects.

In project one (1), the WA SAC will conduct research using incident-based crime data. Specifically, and since the FBI’s transition from Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) data to National Incident Based Reporting Systems (NIBRS) has required states to make changes, the state of Washington will expand their capacity by assessing the quality of Washington’s NIBRS data and improve the quality for use in targeted research projects.

In project two (2), the WA SAC will review different updated platforms to share crime data information with the public such as Tableau and Power BI. (CA/NCF)